Australia and New Zealand are enmeshed with the Middle East through immigration, travel, trade and security. But how much do we know of the history of this relationship?

Imagining Arabia is investigating Australian and New Zealand understandings of the region we call the 'Middle East' in the period up to the end of World War Two. Looking at the sources produced by different kinds of encounter with the Middle East - from Sunday School and storybooks, to soldiering and souvenirs - we hope to better illuminate persistent cultural presence of Middle Eastern peoples and places in the Australasian imagination.

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Many Australians and New Zealanders will recognize this image because they have seen one very like it.  Visiting the pyramids was a 'must-do' on almost every soldier's and nurse's list if they passed through Cairo. There was a thriving local tourist industry of guides and drivers, photographers and caterers. For Australasian visitors, Egypt was already strongly associated with antiquity in their minds, and this preconception was reinforced by tourist activities like this one. But Egypt was also a modern country and nowhere was this more apparent than the bustling, cosmopolitan city of Cairo.
'Five Soldiers on Camels', c. 1916, in Trevor Cross Collection, Wairarapa Archive, Masterton, 11-130/2-27.