Fed up with suburbia, Kye Schaaf and Gill Wheadon left Alice Springs more than 13 years ago for a caravan trip across the outback.
It wasn't the usual Winnebago or campervan. Ms Schaaf and Mr Wheadon's camel caravan was pulled by eight camels. Along with the camels, the solar-powered caravan was home to a donkey, dogs, doves and parrots. Their chickens quickly learned that the best spot to catch the breeze was in the front where their heads could stick out.
For three years the camel caravan travelled from the Northern Territory to NSW. The couple often exchanged their labour for a resting place from the heat on outback properties whose generosity astounded them. "We'd be 100 kilometres down the road ... and a postie would pull up with a casserole," recalled Mr Wheadon.
Finally, they came to rest for a summer – a stay that turned into 11 years – at Lake Pamamaroo's abandoned scout camp on Crown land.
"It seemed biblical," Ms Schaaf said of the trek. "And I asked Gil, 'Do any of these biblical stories have a happy ending?' 'No,' he said to me."
The pair are now being threatened with eviction from their animal sanctuary by Rural Harvest Holdings, which is owned by large meat company Thomas Foods, which claims they are on the land illegally.
The case has been raised in NSW Parliament, and the couple's Facebook page, Save the Menindee Lakes Animal Sanctuary, has 2300 supporters.
Following a Supreme Court hearing where the couple represented themselves, the case is scheduled to go to mediation on November 18. Thomas Foods refused to comment.
Ms Schaaf said the couple believed they had negotiated an agreement to stay with a local farmer who thought he was the owner of the lease.
When they offered to buy the property's lease, the farmer said yes. But in 2011, it was revealed the lease holder was not the farmer but Harvest.
NSW's shadow minister for lands Mick Veitch is not surprised by the confusion over who was the rightful lease holder.
An inquiry into Crown land, which reported last month, heard many people found it difficult to identify what was Crown land and where to find this information. Mark Corrigan, acting to Save Collingwood Beach, told the inquiry that he was "shocked at how hard it was to access information about Crown land". To get information about the Collingwood beach reserve, he had to lodge a Government Information (Public Access) Act [GIPA] application.
The report recommended a stocktake of Crown land and the release of an accurate register.
"There is a very real chance that Department of Lands have provided [Schaaf and Wheadon] inaccurate information as to who owns the lease," said Mr Veitch.
Records were so difficult to navigate that it was almost impossible to identify a lease holder or identify where a crown land lease may begin and end, he said.
Supporters say Ms Schaaf and Mr Wheadon are the only people in the area who care for wildlife hit by cars, parrots abandoned by owners, and dogs that nobody wanted.
When we arrived, Ms Schaaf was holding a joey whose tail had been bitten by birds of prey when his mother was killed on nearby roads.
Recent winds had shaken birds out of trees, and some had legs strapped up or in crutches. They also care for a collection of older parrots who have outlived their elderly owners. A parrot that used to live at the Silverton pub blows kisses like "a dirty old perv," said Ms Schaaf, scaring her in the middle of the night.
"We arrived here with enthusiasm and a fabulous vision! Not necessarily for here, but when we asked if we could buy it, we were told YES," Ms Schaaf said on Facebook. "We wanted to create a unique and memorable experience for people that would have a lasting impact. Our world is so crazy people often get disconnected from whats important in life and we wanted to help reconnect them," she said.
