Peter the camelman is back in town and he's brought his herd with him

He's certainly earned the title, having caught and raced camels for more than 30 years.

When asked how he became a camelman, Mr Hodge chuckled to himself before casting his mind decades back.

"I used to live in Alice Springs in the '80s and I met a friend up there that in 1986 said 'do you want to come and chase some camels?'," he told The Standard from Port Fairy, where he is based for a few weeks each summer.

"My friend's uncle Ian Conway owned Kings Creek Station and he used to export camels to America."

While they were introduced to Australia in 1840 to aid inland exploration, many camels were released into the wild by the 20^th century, when cars had outmoded their usage.

Despite recent culling attempts, the population has ballooned to more than one million.

Although feral camels are known to be aggressive, Mr Hodge said they could quickly become friendly with people.

"When you get a wild one, in a couple days they want to know who you are because they're very inquisitive," he said.

"It's funny, a wild camel loves lucerne hay. So give them plenty of lucerne and they love you."

The Cosgrove man gained an affinity for camels during the four or five years he spent catching them on weekends at Kings Canyon.

He bought camels of his own in 1993 and has been offering rides ever since.

While he works in Melbourne from May to August, Mr Hodge returns to Port Fairy every year for the summer holidays and will be in town until the Australia Day weekend.

In a few months he'll begin training for camel races in Queensland that are set to take place in July.

Mr Hodge's most senior camel Roman won four camel cups in Alice Springs before retiring from racing in 2019.

"People think that it's a novelty event, but the people who race get quite serious," he said.

Mr Hodge said anything that could be taught to a horse could also be taught to a camel.

"And they make good work animals. You can ride them all the time like a horse," he said.

"The trouble is, people get the camels and they have them as petting ornaments when they should actually do something with them."