By John Elsdon

Honest, we were visiting Australia purely for a holiday - the fact that the time of our visit coincided with the date of their National Pigeon Show was purely coincidental. Further, the fact that we were visiting that part of that vast country where their National Show was to be held was also pure coincidence . . . If you believe that . . !

And so it was that our little party of Beverley and myself, along with Jayne and Peter Abbott and Christine and Kevin Keeler became to be known as the 'International Judges and their Wives' - we even found that on a label on our breakfast table at one hotel. We also left our trade mark wherever we could, in the sand on the beach, at the commencement of each day's filming, on a display board in another hotel - our mark - 'KLFF ON TOUR' - we really should have acquired T-shirts bearing that emblem before leaving the UK. (By the way, it's King's Lynn Fur and Feather!)

Andy Lowe had suggested to us beforehand that the only thing we had in common was pigeons and we would be running out of something to talk about after a couple of days. I thought he knew me better than that! In fact, we have five hours of video tape and about five hundred photographs to prove that in two weeks we had plenty to see and do. The Pigeon Show itself is only represented by about twenty minutes of tape!

We had a wonderful and hilarious two weeks with the Abbotts and the Keelers. They returned hone and Beverley and I stayed on for another week by taking the Indian Pacific train from Perth to Sydney, 2,751 miles, what a helluva country. Beverley is a regular bell-ringer at home and got to ring the bells in both Perth and Sydney.

But I suppose I'd better report on the pigeons.

The show was in Perth which you will have gathered from the distance mentioned above, is a long way from the main centres of pigeon keeping, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne etc. Even so, just under 2,000 pigeons were on display, set out beautifully in a light and airy building. In fact, one of the smartest and tidiest pigeon shows I have ever seen. A lot of work had been put into this by the Western Australian Pigeon Breeders and Exhibitors Association.

As in the UK there were far too many classes (2,266 in the schedule with four each for just about every colour and variety). So many had no entries at all and many more had only the odd bird in them. Eighty-four exhibitors, many of whom we had met on our earlier visit in 2000 and are now good friends, including Alan Makin who is the President of the British Holle Cropper Club in the UK.

Read the rest of John Elsdon's report in the September issue of Feathered World