We drove and drove and drove, apart from two very quick food stops, and arrived in Queanbeyan, NSW at 5pm - a journey of 13 hours exactly.
Our mission - to attend the 2013 National Wyandotte Show, an event held every 4 years. We headed south in the middle of winter. Who does that?
We stopped in the middle of nowhere for morning tea.
We had to pen the birds as soon as we arrived. We got each bird out of it's box, oiled his/her comb, legs and feet, smoothed their feathers and penned them up (making sure they went into the correct pen). It seemed to take forever. Then we fed and watered them and finally made our way to our motel.
Gibbo left early next morning to be back at the shed by 7am - he was acting as a steward. He likes to do that as he learns a lot as the judge goes to each cage, gets the bird out, holds it up, inspects it then puts it back in the cage (to be inspected once again). Birds are checked for a multitude of faults - split wings, bad combs, wrong eye colour, wrong leg colour, poor tail set, split chest, bad tail set - the list goes on and on.
I took a little longer to get going. I went back to bed after breakfast and read for ages. I didn't need to race to the shed - I had all day! I left the motel mid-morning and made my way up the main shopping street of Q; I stopped for a coffee and little bacon pie at a cafe. While I was there, G sent a text to say that one of the birds had won it's class. I was a bit surprised - I thought we'd really only gone all that way just to make up numbers. I didn't think there was a chance that any of the chooks would win anything at all! Oh ye of little faith....
Turns out, the two silver laced pullets won Champion Lace and Reserve Champion Lace (out of all the different coloured laced Large birds there); one of the white pullets won Champion White (obviously out of all the white Large birds) - and then the white pullet went on to win Champion Large and the winning silver laced won Reserve Champion Large (beating all the Large roosters, cockerels, hens and other pullets). You could have blown me over with a feather (and there were plenty of those)!
But wait, there's more. The Champion Large bird then went up against the Champion Bantam bird (a pullet, owned by someone else) for the award of overall Champion Bird of Show - and she came second - so she was Reserve Champion Bird of Show! Unbelievable!
I took lots of photos (oh really you say?)! Here they are in no particular order.
The two silver laced girls.
I took photos of the impressive array of trophies (before I realised some of them were ours)!
Champion Large (Standard).
The judge and the apprentice.
The only photo of me taken all weekend, with Megg Miller from Grass Roots and Australasian Poultry magazines. She was also the dinner speaker.
Champion Large Award for the white pullet.
The big prize!
All the ribbons.
Next morning was cold.
We headed back to the shed to inspect the birds that would be in the auction...yes, of course we did. We bought two more to bring home (plus another two for other people). Thirteen birds on board on the way home.
It turned bleak and colder after lunch.
The cavalry. After the auction you could only retrieve your purchased bird/s once you had your receipt in your hand. Once of this crew would then accompany you to the pen and check the bird out.
Finally, we were free to go. Somehow we fitted everyone in, including two extra carry cages. We left Q after 1pm and drove north, skirting around western Sydney (in terrible weather) and drove until we couldn't go any more. We stayed the night in Scone. Next morning we drove to Quirindi to have a look at some cattle on feed then headed for home, arriving around 4.30pm. 2461km and 27 hours of driving all up. Crazy.
It turned out to be a good few days away. I met some new people and enjoyed talking to them. Nobody really knew us, apart from 1 or 2 people that G has met at shows before and that he knows through the poultry website he frequents. People talked about chooks, not cattle. It was a refreshing change.
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