'I'm trying to shake the Camel Man title': WA broker hangs up reins

Perth broker John Elliott has returned home after years undertaking a 12,000-plus kilometre camel trek around Australia.

He was welcomed in Geraldton on Saturday by a crowd of supporters and tells insuranceNEWS.com.au. a book is being finalised and a documentary of his adventures is likely to appear on a streaming service late next year.

Sydney-based cameraman Cam Watt filmed the whole adventure, and the team are soon headed to California and Texas to meet with media heavyweights Amazon Prime and Netflix to discuss broadcasting the results.

“We’ve got probably close to 20 terabytes of footage that has to be filtered down into two hours,” says Mr Elliott, who resigned as CEO of his Perth-based Elliott Insurance Brokers in 2018 to launch his expedition and “find a different way to happiness”.

“I finished walking the camels to a holding paddock and I hung up the lead rope on Monday,” he said.

“The city of Geraldton was nice enough to host us in their multipurpose centre and people from around Australia who had hosted me along the way flew in. Every state was represented, and we had friends and family from Perth and all around that came up to celebrate.”

Mr Elliott, who detected early-stage melanoma during a physical examination when preparing, says the trip “redefined success on my own terms”.

“I gave away my dream car, resigned as CEO from my own company, walked away from my house, regular wage and my creature comforts,” he said.

The brokerage is busy establishing new larger premises and a co-working space after the team grew to around 20, and will welcome him back next month.

“I’ll be going back to the company but not in my original capacity, especially with the amazing job that the management team has been doing,” Mr Elliott said.

“I’m still trying to shake the Camel Man title, and then I’ll figure out what rises to the surface after that.”

The trip fostered a new empathy for clients experiencing severe weather events after the expedition met with drought, January 2020 bushfires, a cliff fall rescue in the Victorian High Country after a major rains, and a snow storm with 140 kph winds.

“The nature of a trip that goes through every state is you will experience every kind of weather, terrain and develop an appreciation and understanding of that, the hardships that people go through, especially in regional Australia.

“We very much got firsthand experience of what our clients experience on a regular basis,” Mr Elliott said.

Camels Ted, Jackson, Arthur, Bill and Charlie are now to be retired to a farm. Asked whether he misses them, Mr Elliott says “as much as you develop a really close connection, you look forward to your break as well”.

“It’s been three and a half years of being attached to them,” he said. “It’s kind of like when you’ve got kids – I think I’m enjoying the break at the moment.”