OPINION: Phillip Adams | March 14, 2009

There are some 50 million donkeys around the planet. Leaving aside Australia’s ferals, most are in penal servitude in China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mexico. Donkeys have been beasts of every burden for 6000 years and when not lugging impossible loads have carried such heavyweights as Sancho Panza, Jesus Christ and, I’m ashamed to admit, me.

And the reward for all their labour? To be treated with derision. Ass and donkey: two words carrying the baggage of contempt. Even Mohammed singles them out – warning Muslims that the donkey’s bray indicates the presence of the devil. Hence donkeys are to be shunned at times of prayer. At the risk of a fatwah let me disagree with the Prophet. He was being unfair about the donkey’s vocalisation. It’s designed to carry at least three kilometres over the desert.

Notwithstanding guest appearances in Winnie the Pooh, Animal Farm, Pinocchio, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Don Quixote, Shrek and the Bible, donkeys get little applause.

My affection for the odd-toed ungulate began decades ago when I took pity on donkeys hired to lug us between Egyptian tombs (wherein they’re commonly depicted) and, promptly dismounting, had to be dissuaded from lugging mine instead. Back in Australia I expiated my guilt by buying a jack and a jenny, proffering them and their offspring – in due course a dozen – more congenial careers as pets. Despite being despised by our horses and disliked by the dogs, they’ve been happy members of the family. Mostly known by Egyptian names (for example, Neffy for Nefertiti and Cleo for Patra), they’re almost fiercely affectionate, shoving each other aside as they jostle for ear-scratches and nose-rubs. And donkeys aren’t donkeys in the pejorative sense. Compared to sheep they’re public intellectuals.

But up and down the Nile their plight remains appalling. Most pull carts that would defeat the 4WDs seen on the telly towing jumbo jets. Or they stagger under great mounds of sugarcane. And they’re often left standing fully loaded in the markets for hours on end. I’ve also seen them blindfolded, spending an entire day in a heavy harness circling a giant wooden axle lifting water for irrigation. The legs of overloaded donkeys distort and buckle. They collapse in the street. They die young.

We visit an organisation in Luxor that tries to help – both with emergency medical treatment and the education of the owners. The young vets can’t cope with the diseased and decrepit animals – and there’s at least as much drama with the horses that pull the caleches that outnumber the taxis. Too often whipped into a canter for the amusement of tourists, too often hit by vehicles. A horse is brought in while I’m talking to a young vet – lying in a flood of blood in the back of a ute. “The leg is broken. We can’t help it,” he says. I’ll long remember the horror in the creature’s eyes, dimming only when it was given a merciful jab. “No, it will not be cut up. We will bury it in the desert…”

We’re befriended by a caleche driver, inevitably called Mohammed, who has 11 children and two horses. The former dependent on the latter. He takes us to his home and proudly displays his kids, grandkids, chooks and buffalo. And his other horse. While one works the other rests. Yet despite horses being immensely expensive, too many of Mohammed’s colleagues treat theirs as stupidly, as cruelly, as the farmers their donkeys. And after thousands of years their attitudes are unlikely to change.

Though Columbus introduced donkeys to the Americas centuries earlier, they only became popular during the Gold Rush. In Australia, the mule – that sterile hybrid of a male donkey and a female horse -was invaluable in harsh areas, Aboriginal stockmen preferring it for its endurance. Yet while the horse is an Australian hero, the donkey and the mule hardly figure in our mythology. Except, of course, for one donkey. Simpson’s. Its name, incidentally, was Duffy.

So here’s to Duffy and all the other donkeys who’ve helped humanity. They deserve a rousing chorus of The Donkey Serenade.