Mahomet Allum

Mohamet Allum ( – 21 March 1964), also known as Muhammad Alam Khan or Mahomad Allum and nicknamed "The Wonder Man", was an Afghan herbalist based in Adelaide, South Australia.

He arrived as one of the Afghan cameleers brought into Australia to work on the camel trains which were being used to explore the interior of the continent in the late 19th century, and worked around the country before settling in Adelaide in 1899.

Early life Allum was a Pashtun born in Kandahar, Afghanistan, around 1858.

He travelled through Asia selling Arab horses and camels to the British Army, before sailing to Australia, arriving between 1884 and 1890. in 1890, and again in 1903. he became a well-known figure in the town. with costs amounting to £65, despite over 40 witnesses having testified that he had never represented himself as a doctor.

Although he was occasionally extreme in his criticism of Western medicine, by all accounts his treatments, based on traditional Afghan and/or Islamic medicine, achieved good outcomes for his patients. His challenging of the prevailing view of European racial superiority was also rare at that time.

Until the mid-40s, he enjoyed almost unanimous public support. However, after that point, he was criticised in some quarters, being described as “a foreigner, the most discussed man (except Hitler)” (The Bunyip, 1941) and “Australia’s most bizarre personality” (Smith's Weekly, 1946). It was around this time that his lifestyle changed somewhat from its previous simplicity; from having no car, he owned an expensive Daimler, and he possessed expensive jewellery.

Allum died on 21 March 1964,#tag:ref|Jones He also published many advertisements for his healing services in the South Australian Police Journal.

Respect and charitable works A 1940 article in the Tasmanian Labor Party weekly, Voice, edited by Edmund Dwyer-Gray, then Treasurer of Tasmania, said that Allum had the support of Lady Gowrie, wife of the Governor-General, and "of a large number of Adelaide's most distinguished citizens". The author of the article (presumably Dwyer-Gray) opined that he was a "better Christian than most Christians" and wrote of talking to Allum in his "flower-bedecked" rooms in 1936. By 1940 he had given more than £15,000 to South Australian charities, apart from his free consultations to the poor.

His estate, worth £11,218, was nearly all left to charities which cared for children.

On Allum's 81st birthday, he bought 14 allotments at the Centennial Park Cemetery, in order to provide burial plots for other Muslims who could not afford a decent burial.