By Mikayla van Loon
Described “as my Men’s Shed”, the Croydon Homing Pigeon Club is more than just a place for people to race birds but is an outlet for social and mental support.
Supporting the community both within the club and outside of it has become a major focus, that’s why on Sunday 3 November members from Croydon and beyond will be hosting a fundraiser for the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Club member and event organiser Peter Farrell said with so many men impacted by prostate cancer and being a primarily male club, it seemed a fitting choice.
“We have some special races during the year, including one from Tasmania where the proceeds go to Camp Quality,” he said.
“This is the first time we’re running this one from Lakes Entrance, and we decided that we do it for prostate cancer research.”
As a prostate cancer survivor himself, the fundraising event also holds significance for Mr Farrell, not only for funds but for awareness too.
“We also have a speaker coming from [the Prostate Cancer Foundation] organisation to give us about a 15 minute talk on prostate cancer and the research that they’re doing so it gives us a bit of an indication of what they would do with the proceeds from our fundraiser,” he said.
With the actual race of the birds happening on Tuesday 5 November, beginning at Lakes Entrance, Mr Farrell said Sunday night’s event will consist of what they call “basketing the birds”, ready for them to travel down to the seaside town on Monday.
Mr Farrell said as part of the fundraising there will be “food and drinks, and we’ll run at Calcutta, we’ll run a Melbourne Cup sweep as well. We’re going to auction off some birds as well. So some of the members have donated some birds.”
Major sponsors like Bendigo Bank and another dozen or so sponsors have also jumped on board to get the fundraising efforts off the ground.
And with members from nearby clubs, who form the Greater Melbourne Pigeon Federation, coming in support, Mr Farrell said he was only expecting 30 to 40 people but it appears to be a much larger occasion.
“It’s actually escalated bigger than what I thought,” he said.
Then there’s the racing element, with the birds set to take flight on Tuesday morning and landing back home around lunch time.
“They’re all released together at eight or nine o’clock in the morning, and then they find their way home, and it’s all done on velocity to where you live,” Mr Farrell said.
“So I’m out in Healesville, so I’m classed as a short flyer, because the birds have less to travel from the release point to my loft compared to the guys way down at Dandenong or Mornington Peninsula.”
Each bird is fitted with an identification ring at just a year old and then when it’s time to race, a chip that tracks their flight and time is added.
“What we have here at home is, when they land on the loft, there’s a scanner that will scan that chip and record it on the clock.
“It’s all electronic nowadays, so we don’t have to be here when the birds get home. The old days, they used to have a rubber ring on them, and you had to pull the rubber ring off physically and put it in a clock and then do it that way.
“Then we take the clock back into the club, it gets put into the main system, and it automatically calculates the velocity and who’s won and who hasn’t.”
Mr Farrell said this year for Croydon, it has been an “outstanding” and successful year with a number of members racing some great birds, placing in the higher results each week throughout the July to November season.
In terms of the sport itself, Mr Farrell said it’s “a growing sport where, probably 10 years ago, it was a dying sport” with lots of new members joining for next year.
“I used to race when I was a kid, and then I’ve only just been back in it for two years.
“Life gets busy, you don’t have the time and then now at retirement age you get the time, and most of the guys of the club are the same.
“They might not like playing bowls or going to the Men’s Shed or whatever and they may have had an interest in pigeon racing when they were younger and might just say, ‘Oh, look, I wouldn’t mind going down and having a look’.”
Mr Farrell said there are a number of younger members also joining the club who have “been racing since they were kids and kept it going”.
“If you’re living in suburbia, there’s always somebody within a couple of kilometres if you want to know something, you can go around to see them, or they’ll come around and help you out.”
Trying to keep membership fees down as much as possible, Mr Farrell said the club wants to make the sport as accessible as possible for people, while having a focus on giving back.
Croydon Homing Pigeon Club is located at Hughes Reserve, 435 Maroondah Highway Croydon. Sunday’s event commences at 6pm.
