In his early years in the colony, Dost attended night classes at Perth Boys High School to learn English, in which he became very proficient.
Camel transport operators, mostly from South Asia and known as the "Afghans", quickly established themselves here, many living in a tent settlement at the end of Coolgardie Street.
[citation needed] Over the next decade, Dost carried goods to remote settlements further north including Laverton, Wiluna, Cue, Port Hedland and Marble Bar.
Camels were still to be seen loaded with wool bales loping between some of these stations and the rail head until the mid nineteen thirties.
Small stores and hotels alongside prospecting sites retailed food, drink, clothing and other supplies which were brought in by camels as well as teams of horses and bullocks and, eventually, by rail from the Whim Creek wharves.
[citation needed] Dost set up a permanent base at Port Hedland in 1906, servicing the Pilbara region.
Five children were born in Western Australia: Lillian Rosetta (1898–1970), Hagu (Ada) 1902–1987), Alious Ameer (Arthur) (c. 1904-1988), Jenneth (Jean) (1906-), and Pathama (Violet) (1908–1983).
The couple moved around, working the camels through the goldfields and stations of northwest Western Australia, before finally establishing a permanent home in Port Hedland, where they were respected members of the small town (population about 200 by 1909).
The eldest two girls attended the local primary school when it opened in 1906 alongside other children of European, Aboriginal and Chinese descent.
Warned by some of them of threats to her life, she and the children moved to a compound the other side of Karachi, gaining the protection of a trusted relative.
Three months after arriving in India, in August 1910, Annie was stabbed to death in her bed while her two youngest children lay alongside.
[citation needed] After the trial, the five youngest children were returned to Australia under an agreement between the district magistrate at Karachi and the Federal and Western Australian Governments, and eventually placed in the care of the State.
After their deaths, accounts of their parents' assets included camels, property in Port Hedland, monies owing to the estates, and jewellery, but the children did not inherit any of this.
[12] With the exception of 15 hours of taped interviews by the Battye Library in Perth, very little account of their early lives was passed on by the Australian-born children.
[3] The tamarind tree that still grows in Port Hedland at the site known as One Mile is reputed to have been planted by Dost Mahomet.