Humans have been racing homing pigeons for the best part of 2000 years. Today, the south-west has three clubs dedicated to breeding, training and racing the mottled gray and green speedsters. SHERELE MOODY ventures into the loft for a peek at the low-profile sport.
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About 30 men are milling around a small shed behind Lake Pertobe, their quiet chatter occasionally interspersed with the soft "coo coo" of pigeons.
Outnumbering the men seven to one, birds of all colours with tiny electronic chips on their legs are waved across a small machine that records their number very few haves names and other details, and notes are jotted down on a large whiteboard before the birds are released into specially-crafted wire baskets on the back of a ute.
Laughter and tales of races long gone are recounted as the men, mostly retirees, wait patiently for their birds to be packed away for the long drive to Broken Hill.
About 220 birds belonging to members of the Warrnambool, Camperdown and Portland clubs leave at 3am on Friday, arriving in the NSW outback city nine hours later.
There they are fed and watered in preparation for the thing that brings these blokes (and one woman) together every week, rain, hail or shine the race home on Sunday.
Warrnambool Pigeon Racing Club treasurer Graeme McLeod strikes it lucky (and it is mainly luck that stands between the winners and the losers) when his bird 02459 wins the race, earning a prize of $25 for its owner.
The pigeons not only have to battle the elements to find their way home. They also face being caught and eaten by predators from above.
"It was a very quick race, they were home from Broken Hill in seven hours and 17 minutes,'' Mr McLeod said.
"There was a tailwind on Saturday from the north and they did about 1694 metres per minute.
"They've got to be strong and they've got to be fit.
"They've got to have the right bloodlines and the right food it's not just a matter of getting a pigeon from anywhere and sending it up there and thinking that it will come home.
"You've got to get decent bloodlines, breed them properly and feed them and train them.''
Mr McLeod puts a lot of work into training his racing stock.
"This morning I was up to Lake Bolac for a training run I do that a couple of times a week,'' he said.
"I let them go and they just beat me home this morning they were home in 57 minutes.
"They do it quicker than that sometimes. When there's a tailwind they'll be home in 40 minutes. It depends on the conditions.''
Mr McLeod has about 100 breeding birds and 70 racers, ranging in age from chicks to 20 years old.
Unlike some fanciers who destroy their birds once they can no longer breed or race them, Mr McLeod allows his animals to live out their final years in peace and quiet.
Mr McLeod said bird losses were very low.
"You can lose some over extreme distances. The majority that we don't get home are taken by the peregrine falcon or they go into some other pigeon fancier's loft and we get them home that way, or they'll stop off at a farm,'' he said.
"When we have races that are long races and they don't get home on the first day, which sometimes happens when you get up to 800km and over, they'll fly until dark then they'll perch on a roof or a tree and when it gets light again up they'll go and start coming home again.
"Quite often we have farmers bringing lost pigeons to us (the club) and we get them back to their owners."
Racing pigeons are given a lifetime identity as young chicks. The ID details are recorded at the start of each race and the information scans again at the end of the race, thanks to an electronic device at the fancier's loft.
This information is automatically relayed back to the club, hence the ability to correctly determine the winner of each race.
The information also comes in handy when birds don't make it home.
"When the bird is seven days old we put what is called a life-ring on their legs, so once it's on you can't get it off. The only way you can get it off is cut it off,'' Mr McLeod said.
"You can't cheat. On that ring it's got the place and year it was born and a registration number and the phone number of our ring secretary, so if some bird of ours gets lost they ring up and report it to our ring secretary and he tells us.''
Catching lost racing pigeons is easier said than done.
"If they get lost, you can walk them into a closed space you couldn't just go up to one and pick it up. Or if you know where they're perching at night they can't see at night so if you're quiet you can sneak up and pick them up,'' Mr McLeod said.
Pigeon racing can be traced back to 220AD.
It had its heyday in Belgium in the mid-19th century.
There are hundreds of thousands of fanciers across the globe, with the Chinese being particularly passionate about the sport.
Yet it's a mystery as to what drives pigeons home.
"That the $64 question, no one really knows,'' Mr McLeod said.
"It's an instinct sort of thing.
"You can't teach a pigeon to home.
"You can get it fit so it will come home quicker and all that type of thing, but you can't really teach it.
"There's lots of theories.
"They seem to think that pigeons may be able to navigate by the stars or the sun.
"For instance, if you let pigeons go in heavy overcast conditions it takes them a lot longer to get their bearings to fly home than if it's a nice bright sunny day.
"Some people think it might be a magnetic type of thing, because sometimes if there's sun spot activity it seems to muck up their homing ability for a while.
"They've had lots of experiments but they just haven't been able to say definitely how it is.
"A lot of them fly home just for the perch they perch on.''
The former businessman used to run, with his brother, one of Warrnambool's iconic caf s, Mack's Snacks, which his father Aubrey McLeod opened over 65 years ago.
Now retired, the 73-year-old father of three sons said he began racing pigeons when he was 20.
His wife of more than 50 years, Elma, has learnt to live with her husband's passion, but it's his youngest son Chris, a solicitor in Melbourne, who will carry on his obsession into the next generation of McLeods.
"My wife says I've been racing for too long,'' he said.
"I've been racing for 53 years.
"You get the parents, the right bloodlines and you breed the pigeons you watch it grow up from just a baby, then you train them, you get them to come home.
"I remember one time my son and I took the pigeons up to Bourke and I let them go there in the morning and away they went.
"They headed off down the road and we followed them for about 10 kilometres and they were out of sight.
"The next morning I'm standing out there in front of my loft and all of a sudden in the distance I see this little bird going flat out wanting to come home it just comes and pitches in.
"You get a real buzz from that. You really do because of all the work that's gone into it and for the love of the bird.''
smoody@fairfaxmedia.com.au
