Ben Stubbs witnesses the great sandy spectacle of the Sahara Festival, where camels wrestle.

The Sahara is the biggest sand dune in the world. At 9 million square kilometres it covers an area larger than Australia and the undulating hills of sand stretch from Algeria through Egypt and Sudan among other countries. Each time there is a dust storm the desert wind sends hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sand across the world, from Florida to the Amazon basin.

As I stand on the edge of the desert in southern Tunisia, the afternoon dust plasters every exposed bit of skin. Not that it matters, though. I’m just one of the thousands of people cramming the entrance gates to the annual Sahara Festival. Arriving on a grey afternoon, my festival is almost immediately cut short. An impatient horse bucks from its Tunisian owner and jerks free momentarily. It skids across the dust, with legs bucking for freedom. As I close my eyes and whisper “help,” the robed man snatches its reins and pulls the snorting horse into line. As he jumps back into the saddle I’m given a sheepish grin before he gallops off into the melee.

The festival is held at the end of December each year. However, because of the difference with the Islamic calendar (11 days shorter than the Western year), this date is flexible and hard to pin down, adding to the intrigue of the event for curious nomads who come from places stretching from Canberra to Timbuktu.

Originally held under a few tattered tents, the festival has now grown into an internationally recognized celebration, drawing up to 50,000 people to the Tunisian desert to witness the cultural and ethnic expressions of Saharan life. It is thought to have started in 1910 as a Bedouin marriage celebration for the nomads of northern Africa. The courting is more ceremonial today but the festival is still important as an annual ritual that reaffirms many of the age-old Saharan practices such as poetry (still seen as a significant method of storytelling among the Bedouin), camel racing, traditional dancing and dog hunting.

Pushing through the crowd on to the dusty arena, I’m met by a portly Tunisian policeman. He blocks my entry and implores me to turn around. Using my best combination of charades and beginner’s French, I convince him that I won’t get trampled or cause any problems. He looks slyly around the arena to see he isn’t being watched and waves me through.

I wander past warbling Malian singers in sky-blue robes; desert tuaregs who have ridden across the dunes from southern Algeria, grooming and decorating their prized horses with ribbons and baubles before they race; and Tunisian Berbers (desert people) brewing sweet tea in the goat’s hair tents that are dotted around the plains.

As the festivities unfold, the heavy sky threatens to erupt at any moment. Tribes from all over Africa line the arena’s edges, looking as if they’re about to do battle.

Tunisian nomads carrying antique rifles sit atop decorated Arab horses, Libyan gypsies with frayed turbans whipping in the wind pace around the dusty boundary on their majestic white camels and Algerian tuaregs clean their already gleaming scimitars.

Interrupting the intensity on the peripheries of the arena, an Egyptian dancer in a cherry-red vest, playing the flute and balancing four ceramic jugs on his head, reminds me that this is a celebration, not a confrontation.

For the next event of the afternoon, demonstrating to the crowd that camels are more useful than just desert taxis, I watch a group of serious men lead their decorated two-humped beasts into the centre of the arena for one of the highlights of the festival: camel wrestling. As the crowd looks on, the two grumpy dromedaries circle each other cautiously. With a series of clumsy leg holds and head butts, they engage in battle until one camel runs from the arena towards town and the other is declared the victor.

The oasis of Douz is more than just a meeting place. It has long served as an important trading post in the desert of northern Africa and it has the largest palmeirie in Tunisia, with nearly half-a-million trees planted.