Photojournalist Focuses on Racing a Camel Across Australia

Read these words from 29-year-old Allen Deever:

--My greatest fear is that someone will accuse me of being normal.

--I want to work two days a week and take five off.

--(Everything) I do is a declaration of freedom.

--I eat weeds from my side yard because they’re healthy.

So it doesn’t seem unusual that he plans to jockey a camel in the 2,000-mile Great Australian Camel Race across the Great Dividing Range to the Gold Coast as part of Australia’s bicentennial celebration.

The race will take three months.

“There’s never been a race of this magnitude before and it’s something that won’t come along for another 200 years,” said Deever, a photojournalist from Fullerton. “How often does a guy get a chance to ride off in history? It’s my kind of thing.”

His wife, Susan, 26, a Cal State Fullerton student who plans to teach, will join him midway. “Actually, we’re quite alike,” she said, “even though we’re really different from each other.”

Four years ago, the Deevers sold all their possessions. For months, they lived the life of Robinson Crusoe on South Sea islands.

He said they taught the natives such things as how to make papaya pizza as well as the use of plants, which he learned by studying ethnobotany at Cal State Fullerton.

“Actually, I’m a beachcomber at heart,” he said, noting that he earns money selling stories and pictures of their South Sea adventures to magazines.

Susan Deever helped him cook their last Thanksgiving dinner, which included pine tree bark pie and weed soup. “It was good,” she said. “Even our folks liked it.”

Allen Deever is preparing for the April 24 race by bicycling 20 miles a day, taking 10-mile night hikes and riding horses to develop calluses in the right places. He’ll leave in early April for a training period in Australia.

“I’ve only been on a camel once,” said Allen Deever, “and he tried to kill me after I got bucked off.” But he said camels can be affectionate and he hopes to get one of those.

The camel and a support vehicle with supplies will cost about $25,000--an amount he hopes to raise through sponsors for the race. The grand prize is $55,000.

But the money, he says, is just a way to his fantasy life style, which includes parachuting, crocodile hunting in Australia and climbing active volcanoes in New Zealand.

If he wins the race, Deever said, he wants to sail around the world, stopping off at little islands. He plans to have his wife meet him at various destinations.

“Sometimes it’s better for us to pursue our dreams separately,” he said.

It was supposed to be a pretty close girls varsity basketball game between Katella in Anaheim and Los Alamitos high schools. They met earlier, Katella winning by eight points.

But the recent game turned into a blowout, with Katella winning, 56-32, partially because 6-1 senior Diane Sands of Los Alamitos didn’t play.

“I told her it was her decision,” said coach Al Gragnano, in his second year of running the school’s girls basketball team.

Diane was attending a wedding rehearsal for her older sister.

The topic was “In Search of a Good Night’s Sleep,” a free one-hour seminar presented by Dr. Robert Roethe at the Fullerton Internal Medicine Center. It drew a full house.

“A lot of people just have problems sleeping,” said center spokeswoman Nancy Decious.

And if sleeping is often difficult for people, Decious said, “You ought to see the response we get for our snoring seminars.”

She said people who come to her seminars are very attentive. “I stay at the door watching the people come in, and you can’t imagine how many women bring their husbands, a notebook pad and pencils with them. They really want to learn.”

She noted that when the seminar was over, “everyone just stayed, hoping they could get individual answers.” And as they finally left, she said one husband told his wife, “You know, you snore too.”

Acknowledgments--Laura Longwill of La Habra, after recording a milestone in her volunteer career at Brea Community Hospital by logging her 10,000th hour, was chosen Volunteer of the Year and received the group’s highest honor, the Honorary Life Membership Award.