It explains how camels and their cameleers from western Asia helped explore and settle the Outback.

Although the cameleers were generally called Afghans, they came from different ethnic groups and from such diverse places as Baluchistan, Kashmir, Sind, Rajastan, Egypt, Persia, Turkey and Punjab.

Most were Muslim but others were Sikhs.

Federal Government funding, announced by member for Albury Sussan Ley, has allowed Albury council to secure three exhibitions.

The first, Pattern Recognition, prepared by the Object Australian Centre for Craft and Design and Craft Queensland, is scheduled for August and September this year, two months after the library-museum opens.

The second, Colliding Worlds, to be shown in January and February next year, is about the Pintupi people and comes from the Museum of Victoria.

In 1984 a solitary group of Pintupi made their way to an Aboriginal community to be reunited with relatives they hadn’t seen for decades.

The travellers had never worn clothes or seen a motor vehicle and they thought the aeroplanes they had seen flying overhead were ghosts.

The Muslim Explorers exhibition, in January and February next year, will include artefacts and documents such as journals.

It casts light on the cameleers’ links with and divisions from aboriginal and white society, and charts the arrival of Muslim settlers from the Islamic world in Australian towns and cities.