THE Horsham Homing Club will celebrate its centenary next year and like a lot of pigeon racing clubs, its membership is not getting any younger.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
One member who is bucking the trend is Horsham’s Brydon McPhee, who at age eight is the youngest in the club to see his pigeons take to the sky.
Brydon has taken part in the sport for about a year, having first taken a few months to breed pigeons.
“You get two pigeons and put them in a cage and then they lay eggs,” Brydon said.
Brydon said his favourite part of pigeon racing was seeing them return to the backyard.
“It’s nice to see them come home,” he said.
Brydon’s dad Mark said he had pigeons when he was a kid but got back into it this year with Brydon.
“it’s been really good, something to do together as a family,” Mark said.
Brydon took up the sport from Mark, and together they raise birds in their backyard shed before sending them off to be released hundreds of kilometres from home.
Mark said he hoped more young people would join the club as it had four junior members when he first started.
Brydon said about 13 out of 20 bird make it back to their shed and clocked in as their electronic bracelets passed through a tracking gate.
“You can’t have favourites because sometimes they don’t come back,” Mark said.
The Horsham club will celebrate 100 years of racing next year.
As well as a luncheon event, the club plans to hold a race.
“It will be a pretty big year,” Mark said.
Mark and Brydon’s last race was about a month ago from Tibooburra in the north-west corner of New South Wales.
The distance back to Horsham was about 800 kilometres, as the pigeon flies, and the ‘McPhee Family’ birds made it back in just over nine and a half hours.
“We came seventh, I think, in the race,” Mark said.
“We just sit here in the backyard waiting for them to come home. We know roughly how many miles are in the race and how long they will take.”
Mark said the centenary function would be exciting.
“We’re going to have an anniversary race and hopefully we can pick that one up,” he said.
“Hopefully we can crack a win as we’ve had a second and a few thirds this year. We’ve made a few changes so hopefully we can get up there.”