The Kuttabul Camelboks Rugby Union Football Club is steeped in history, but nobody knows how much. Since the founding year of the club all records and history of the club have continually been destroyed by house fires, bush fires, floods, cyclones, tornadoes, earthquakes, the plague and simply mislaid/disappeared.

One thing can be assured is that the club history is punctuated by fact, fiction and human un-truths. It is hoped that our current club historian will start assembling some articles for our new website. But in the mean time please read the following copyrighted article penned by Englishman Mark MacKenzie in 2003.

In the town of Mackay in northern Australia, they take rugby league so seriously they call it Six-Tackle City. If it's a game of rugby union you're after, you need to head out of town. Drive north- east along the Bruce highway - a road so long and straight that locals call it the boring Bruce - and eventually you arrive at the tiny settlement of Kuttabul. There's McGill's Meats, the butcher's shop, the local pub and that's about it. But they do have a rugby team.

In 1992, a Kuttabul farmer named Bill Needham decided he'd had enough of driving round the district for his games of rugby. Keen to put a team together, he distributed 500 leaflets in the surrounding area, inviting players to join his fledgling outfit. The response was muted, but the one reply that did arrive suggested a decent rugby pedigree.

Shane Maloney, as luck would have it, had learned his rugby craft at the same school as a certain Elton Flatley. While Flatley had gone on to represent Australia at fly-half, Maloney had enjoyed something of a lay-off. A 15-year lay-off, he admitted, but bugger it, he wanted another crack.

Needham got on the phone, and a few weeks later, nine players mustered for the first training session. And so, on a sloping paddock next to the pub, training in their own car headlights, the Kuttabul Camelboks were born.

The team were named in honour of a legendary local beast - a cross between a camel and springbok antelope - believed to live on nearby Mount Blackwood. "The camelbok has the agility of a springbok and the stamina of a camel," explains the club president, Bruce Wolsey, when I meet him at a gathering of the club's founding members.

The Camelboks' first game, against local Quarry Hill, was almost forfeited due to lack of numbers. But after roping in three men who had stopped at Kuttabul's pub that morning, as well as Snowy McGill (McGill's Meats), the Camelboks secured an 8-0 victory. Dave Cameron, a Mackay teacher, became the Camelbok's first try- scorer, and the first man of the match, or "hump of the day".

For the next training session, Maloney borrowed a set of floodlights. "Unfortunately, they only covered an area 10 by 20 metres" says Cameron, "so needless to say we didn't practise kicking." In fact, the Camelboks dispensed with kicking altogether, opting instead for a creative running game.

Fixtures came and went, and things went well. Maloney even built his own scrum machine which, when bolted to the back of his pick-up truck, the forwards shoved up the paddock slope with the truck's handbrake on. Players passing through were inducted into the ranks, including a South African who had been good enough for a trial with the Springboks. "And he had the socks to prove it," says Cameron.

But then, a year after their foundation, the club's form dipped. In times of trouble, a rugby club draw on their long history to rally the troops, but Kuttabul Camelboks RFC had only been around for 18 months. Needham had a brainwave. Drafting in local farmers above a certain age, the famous Camelbok side of 1963 was "reunited", the team that in their day had swept all before them. They even posed for photographs in their Sixties rugby kit.

Results began to go their way. Keen to capitalise on the inspiration provided by the '63 side, the Camelboks celebrated their centenary a year later, in 1994, and the team jersey was embellished with the slogan: "100 years".

Guest of honour at the centenary dinner was former Wallaby Peter FitzSimons, who was chauffeured into Kuttabul on a camel. Vince Germanotta, captain of the '63 Camelboks, gave a stirring speech, recalling how his side had snatched the title from the Farleigh Arrows in the dying seconds of that season.

A pathological inability to distinguish fact from fiction has become a regular feature of conversation in Kuttabul, helping cement the Camelbok legend. "Between 1963 and 1992, the club's history is a bit cloudy," explains Wolsey. "A good many records were lost in the cyclone of 1918 and the great flood of 1958. The Camelboks of the great depression played in hessian sacks, you know."

The Camelboks story inevitably found its way into newspapers across Australia. But fame hasn't changed them. "The South African national side visited Queensland in 1993," recalls Meecham Philpott, another member of the Camelboks' "modern revival", " and their players wanted to swap shirts with ours." So which Springbok legend did he trade with? "Mate, Camelbok shirts are for players only."

Today, the team ply their trade in the Mackay and District Rugby Union league. Rivals such as the Glenden Gladiators or Bowen Mudcrabs provide stiff opposition, but any Camelbok worth his hump reserves his season's best performance for the fixture against arch rivals Slade Point Rugby Club, or Sladies Slashers.

"I suppose there was some bad feeling towards the Camelboks initially," says Dan Coonan, the Mackay and District president. "There was the no- kicking thing, but that soon changed; you soon get tired of losing." Coonan's words are harsh, but then he is a former Slashers man. "We simply dared to be better," says Cameron.

This season, player departures have forced Wolsey to pull his boots on again, but the Camelboks have an eye on the future, with a junior squad, the Weeboks.

Each year, the Camelboks test their manhood in the King of the Hill, a race up Mount Blackwood. What distinguishes the event is that it happens to pass through the densest hatching area in Australia of the taipan, the world's most venomous snake. But the Camelboks are not rugby brutes high on testosterone; most have served in the team's cultural wing, the all-male Tabernacle Choir.

The following day, Philpott takes me on a tour of Kuttabul. The disused training paddock - public-liability insurance has herded the Camelboks to facilities in Mackay - lies just 20 feet from the Bruce highway. "When it was muddy, we had to hose the the guys down. They frequently forgot to bring a change of clothes, so we'd drive them home in the nuddy."

Adjacent to the pub is the Mango Blossum ballroom, a corrugated- iron chicken shed that is the venue for all Camelbok social functions. The rugby club's nights in its cobweb-strewn interior are legend.

After two days of Kuttabul stories, distinguishing fact from fiction seems pointless. Does the camelbok even exist? How does a camel mate with an antelope? "We're not really sure," Philpott says, "but to be honest, I think we should respect their privacy."

Mark MacKenzie travelled to Australia as a guest of the Australian Tourist Commission (0191 501 4646, www.australia.com) and Qantas (08457 747 767, www.qantas.co.uk) The Rugby World Cup kicks off on 10 October in Sydney with a Pool A game between Australia and Argentina. The final is on 22 November, also in Sydney.

Copyright 2003 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
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