Delene Wilson's camel sanctuary on Mount Canobolas to launch rides

Delene Wilson and her daughter run Canobolas Camels, a sanctuary on Mount Canobolas where they have about 50 camels that rid the slopes of woody weeds, can be used in photo shoots and some will soon be used for rides.

Ms Wilson has owned camels for eight years and said those at the sanctuary have come from all over the state and South Australia.

Ms Wilson described some camels as "paddock ornaments that they had all these great ideas to do with and they didn't follow through", others were adopted from the circus.

"A camel dairy went bust down at Rochester and a lot of us cameleers were worried that they were going to go to the abattoir so we all got together and we all bought the camels," she said.

"There was about 500 of them so I bought about 35 of those and they were brought up here in three trucks."

She is also currently bottle-feeding and hand raising some orphaned baby camels, one of their mothers had lung cancer and lymphoma and another fell sick and died.

Ms Wilson said the plan is to have six or seven camels "in a string" for the camel rides, which she plans to get up and running when the weather warms up as camels don't like to be worked when it's wet.

"The camel rides were going to be the first thing I was going to do but because of insurances and the wet weather and COVID I put it back to the last thing, I have got the DA approved for out at Lake Canobolas to do the camel rides," Ms Wilson said.

"We will get that up and going before Christmas but the other things are what we are concentrating on for the betterment of camels and people understanding them."

The camel breeder has loved the animals for a quarter of a century.

"About 25 years ago I had my first camel ride out at Silverton by a guy by the name of Harold Cannard, and I fell in love with them.

"It took me basically up until when they had the camel races here to buy my first camel. They were raising money for Camp Quality and you had to bid on a camel and I won the bid.

"I only had one camel and I thought he was a bit lonely and so I connected with Silverton Camels and they took him."

However, she discovered she missed him so much she got two baby hand reared ones and it flourished from there.

"I've done different courses in learning to train them and I've done trek, about 150 kilometres with 14 camels, nine of which were in training.

"Now the guy that I bought my first camel off and the guy that taught me are now working for me doing camel training schools," she said.

Ms Wilson has a three-acre property on the edge of Orange where the training school will be held but the main sanctuary is on Mount Canobolas where the camels are on 160 acres and are eating through the woody weeds and blackberries.

"The camels will go for the weed before they go for the grass, they love that woody weed," she said.

"It's a sanctuary so they are well looked after."

She also offers wedding photos and photoshoots with the camels.

"They get to pat and be around the camels there, they are in with the camels, none of them are nasty, they are all beautiful, majestic and very quiet," Ms Wilson said.

She said the animals, which are commonly associated with desert environments, do well in Orange.

"They have shelter, it gets to minus five in the desert at night and they don't like the wet weather too much but it's very undulating out there where they are so they are able to get up higher, they are not on a flat or anything like that where they get spongy feet," Ms Wilson said.

"As long as they've got condition on them they're fine."

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