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Chooks make the news

Posted on June 17, 2008, 7:07pm

Chris Oldfield

By CHRIS OLDFIELD

A blanket of thick white ice covered everything Monday morning — even the car windscreen.

The crisp morning air was filled with a thick fog and like looking into a sea of mashed potatoes.

It was our first big frost — a reminder winter is upon us regardless of whether we are at Naracoorte, Biscuit Flat or Mount Gambier.

Mount Gambier is a very pretty busy city, but not as busy as Canberra on the weekend.

Did you know Canberra hosted a national chook show last weekend?

Now there is a riveting piece of information we’d be lost without.

The biggest and the best Australian chooks, roosters and pullets rolled in from everywhere with their owners to strut their stuff.

A lot of other things strut their stuff in Canberra, but it mightn’t be politically correct to say so.

News of the chook show is difficult to find — even on the internet.

Fifty years ago big daily newspapers would have been full of it.

Maybe they don’t have the journalists to cover such events these days.

But more likely, it didn’t involve some high profile politician. Nor did it feature a major fire, flood or plane crash.

Had there been a murder, rape or a few gangsters the chooks would have made the news — or a film — Featherbelly.

Yet, behind the chook show would be lots of ordinary people with extraordinary tales about their pet chooks, and more.

We’d get answers to why anyone would keep a big mob of pet chooks when they can’t sell the eggs.

We’d find out why many show chook breeders can’t even give eggs away to places like hospitals.

And we might even hear a few alarming stories about snakes lurking around chook yards.

Luckily for us, our local country papers still like to cover the human side of what is happening in our community — things like chook shows.

Our journalists can’t always get to the events, but committee members do their best to help us with photos and information.

While in Mount Gambier for the last month or two, it has been wonderful to meet so many people who give their time, energy and skills to a variety of good causes.

Maybe not chook shows, but people involved in things like raising funds for cancer research, sporting groups and service clubs like Lions.

People only have until the end of this month to give $10 to our Lions Club in order to help thousands of people around the world to see again.

Our highly respected Eric Roughana is leading that fundraising appeal for Mount Gambier and has already collected almost $3000.

Shutting our eyes is an instant reminder of how awful it would be to be blind — $10 can help enormously.

All our service groups do wonderful and worthwhile things, including the one ones from my home town, Lucindale.

The people of Lucindale, Naracoorte, Robe, Kingston and places in between, along with our cows, I’ve missed terribly.

It is strange waking to sounds of traffic rather than fox howls and cows mooing.

But now our fantastic new editor-in-chief Michael Gorey has arrived and it’s time for me to return to a padded cell in the scrub.

It will be sad to have Mount Gambier’s pretty lights in the rear vision mirror for the last time tomorrow night.

Thank you for having me in South Australia’s best city — Mount Gambier.

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