Tyler Abbot during the trek to Taree.Credit:Scout Hinchliffe
A camel named Yousuf. Another called TNT. Rihanna too, among others. Without them, a $600 wagon and a retired nurse determined to march 3500 kilometres through the outback, Tashiem Abbott has little doubt where he would be.
“Right now, if we weren’t here, we’d be in juvie or jail,” he tells the Herald, twin brother Tyler nodding in agreement.
Tyler and Tashiem Abbott, en route from the outback to “a better life.”Credit:Shar Jem Gypsy Camel Trek
“The way things were going up near Alice Springs, we were up to bad things, and that’s how things go for a lot of kids.
“We’ve got a brand new start here in Taree.”
Three years after first watching State of Origin “on a phone in the middle of nowhere”, rugby league is now central to the Abbott twins’ new day-to-day in Latrell Mitchell country.
With NRL clubs now enquiring about the 15-year-olds, and NSW Origin coach Brad Fittler and Dean Widders thoroughly impressed during a recent NSWRL training camp, the game is a constant in their lives.
Inevitably, though, so is the tale of how they got here.
A six-month camel trek from Hermannsburg, Northern Territory, to the NSW Mid North Coast, completed at the age of 12, makes for plenty of questions and tall tales alike.
Barry Watts was a self-confessed “novice cameleer” when he and his wife Denise arrived in the small town, population 600-ish, almost a decade ago, slowly but surely buying and training a small cohort of the nomadic animals.
Tyler Abbott, 12 at the time, during the troupe’s camel trek from the Northern Territory to Taree.Credit:Scout Hinchliffe
At the same time the Abbott boys, still primary-school aged, were getting into strife with the law and headed only one way. Except when they were training the 500kg beasts with Watts.
“Well, you start with the saddle and a couple of ties, and you have to let him buck,” Tyler, a camel-training veteran by age 10, explains.
“Wait ’til he gets tired and then he’ll get used to you. It takes months but.”
Renovating that $600 wagon and training the camels took the best part of five years as Watts began plotting his odyssey back to NSW.
The death of two close family friends to cancer spawned the Shar Jem Gypsy Camel Trek in mid-2019 and fundraising efforts for World Vision.
Watts’ investment in the two boys and a collective desire for them to get out of town ensured the Abbott twins were along for the ride.
Tyler Abbott (left), Barry Watts and Tashiem Abbott in Taree.Credit:Julie Slavin
“Barry saw us hanging round, getting into things we shouldn’t, he’d get us into the camels and get us working, not just hanging around,” Tyler says.
“Barry looked after us. And everyone in our community could see it was good we were staying out of trouble and working with the camels.
“They loved him and they all gave support for us coming to Taree. We wanted to get a better life down here.”
Half a year on camelback, kangaroo meat and occasional bacon and egg rolls followed for the twins, Watts and 15-year-old family friend Josiah Farthing.
Camel milk tastes surprisingly good, they report. Sleepwalking in the bush is hilarious, when it’s not you.
Some days they travelled 30 kilometres. Others, just two or three. A couple of the camels died and a few were sold as well. Another couple ran away, Tashiem too at one point.
Tyler and Tashiem Abbott complete schoolwork enroute from the Northern Territory to Taree.Credit:Scout Hinchliffe
“He didn’t want to do the washing up!” Tyler laughs.
Tashiem eventually made his way back to camp and the troupe eventually pulled into Taree, where the twins were enrolled at Chatham High and the Clontarf program.
They speak their local language from the Territory – western Arrernte – daily and return home to Hermannsburg once a year to visit family and friends.
The message in return is to stay in Taree, stay in school and pursue a sport that barely registers in the outback, typically Aussie Rules territory.
“The first time we ever played league was with Clontarf,” Tashiem says.
“They’ve looked after us ever since we’ve got here. They’ve got us jobs, we play footy with Clontarf and Taree Red Rovers, we speak our language every day. Especially when we’re playing footy.
The Abbott brothers with a nod to Taree icon Latrell Mitchell.Credit:Julie Slavin
“No one else understands it right, so it works for us. We get into school every day and are making the right choices.”
Lunchtime table tennis matches have since taken the twins to the state championships.
Three years of rugby league have landed Tashiem and fullback and Tyler at lock, as well as an audience with Mitchell and Wayne Bennett when the Rabbitohs superstar brought his old coach to town.
Mitchell’s father Matt is also a local elder and has been a regular fixture in Taree’s Clontarf set-up.
Tashiem Abbott shows his skill in Sydney last month.Credit:NSWRL
In turn, the Abbott boys have found themselves on Fittler’s radar courtesy of the KARI Talented Aboriginal Athletes Program (TAAP) and a three-day camp in Sydney last month.
Fittler, Widders, Nathan Blacklock and Indigenous All Stars coach Ron Griffiths coached 40 Indigenous teens with an eye to picking a NSW Koori side to take on a Queensland Murri outfit early next year.
Tyler Abbott at the NSWRL training camp.Credit:NSWRL
“Those fellas, there’s a bit of character in both of them and throughout the camp they both established themselves as leaders pretty quickly,” Widders says.
“They’re great athletes and they’ve picked the game up really quickly, but I saw the off-field attributes that say they could do really well in the game.
“They were the most popular kids in camp and that story they’ve got, it’s just crazy. I thought it was a joke to start but they were spinning their yarn and a journey like that, you can see it in them now, they think that anything is possible and they’re happy to have a crack at anything they can.”
Including a return journey to Hermannsburg, camels and all.
“I want to do it again,” Tashiem says. “Take some Taree people with us back the opposite way, show them what it’s like and where we’ve come from.”
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