APT Road Trip

It was the Australia Day long week-end and Max and I had each taken the Friday off work to give ourselves four days for our long-planned Sydney trip.

 It all started when APT founding guru, Vaughan Kelly, came up to judge our show last year. Vaughan is now 70 years old and is looking to reduce his commitment to his birds. He invited us down to Sydney to see his birds as well as to meet a variety of other Sydney based APT breeders. The trip had originally been planned for September 2002 but some chest pains for Max led to a quadruple bypass a week before our planned trip thus delaying our eagerly awaited venture.

 After Max slept over at my place we managed to set off a little before 6am on Friday morning. We took two of my distance travelling boxes that hold six birds each. We hoped that would be enough since both Max’s and my loft are brimming to overflowing at the end of a fairly successful breeding season. The NSW government have been spending quite a bit of money upgrading different parts of the Pacific Highway. Sharing the driving in two hour stints and stopping for lunch, we managed to get to Vaughan’s place in Gladesville by a little after 6pm (EDST) making the trip a fairly comfortable 11 hours. Vaughan and his wife Jill made us feel very welcome for the whole of our stay. Vaughan even prepared his famous spaghetti Bolognese for dinner that first night.

 Vaughan had a fairly full day planned for us on the Saturday visiting 5 different fanciers all over Sydney. It was up early (well for me it was early) and off to Neil Stagg’s place. This guy would have to be in sales – he didn’t shut up. We’d been at his place for twenty minutes and hadn’t got passed the front yard yet! Vaughan had us on a tight schedule so he dragged us around the back to see this fairly amazing two-story loft that had seen better days. Though it was chock-a-block full of a great variety of pigeons – Holle Croppers, Racing Homers, Komorner Tumblers, Felegyhauser Tumblers and of course some very nice APTs plus a lot of interesting mixed projects. Neil had a little white hen that was a mix of APT, LFCL Tumbler and Domestic Flight that has us all drooling. A great little bird that should help to advance the whites significantly. There were some nice baldheads here as well.

 After we dragged ourselves away from Neil’s place we were off to Daryl Hoyle’s place. The day was getting a little warm now, the Saturday before Sydney had experienced 43 degrees plus in many suburbs and the effects could be seen in gardens everywhere. Daryl has a very nice, small loft with a good collection of dilute barred Apts as well as the normal Almonds, Reds, and Kites. There were some interesting Indian Fantails here as well.

 Just up the road from Daryl’s was Darcy Cook’s place so we dropped in there for a visit. Now we all know that Darcy doesn’t have APTs but it was really interesting to see some very nice Jacobins. Alan Makin has his birds at Darcy’s place and he was pleased to show us some impressive Holle’s (it seemed that everywhere we went there were Holle’s). He also had some pigmies and Homers. That was my first meeting with Darcy and I can clearly understand why he is seen as one of the great characters of the fancy.

 It was getting late and we’re off to Mark Wilson’s place for lunch and some more APTs. Mark and his lovely wife made us feel very welcome. Mark’s very particular about his birds and the direction he wants his breeding to go. We saw many impressive birds here. Almonds, Reds, Kites etc. (and more Holle’s).

 We’ve now been fed and impressed and we’re off to Jim Narris’s. There were a nice bunch of pigeons here but Jim hadn’t done anything serious with them for a few years. The birds were allowed to fly and had this interesting habit. Beside the loft is a quite mature paper-bark tree about thirty feet (10 metres) tall. The first thing the free flying birds do is to fly over to this tree and find a branch to land on and then proceed to eat the bark! The birds have virtually ring-barked the tree at ground level.

 It was back home to Vaughan’s place and another great meal cooked by his wife Jill this time. Meanwhile Max and I are getting weary.

 Next morning Vaughan had planned for us. We were to judge his birds in their colour classes. Max and I were to do this without consulting one another and compare our results with Vaughan’s results – he had been through this process when the birds had all their feathers – most were seriously in moult now. This was a lot of fun and in most cases we agreed, at least on the first few place getters. Some colour classes had eighteen birds to judge. Vaughan has some extremely good almonds, recessive reds, de roys, and kites. He had some nice mottles, rosewings, splashes and grizzles. I thought his blacks and andalusians could so with some work. The whites are in the process of development and are improving with every generation. The baldheads are likewise on the improve and he had bred a little Red cock that I would have loved to bring back with me but this wasn’t to be.

 We ended up bringing 14 birds back with us and Vaughan would have liked us to take many more. This injection of quality blood from different lines should see our birds generally improve as well as getting some different colours here that haven’t been here before.

 As well as being very educational, this sort of road trip helps engender excitement and renewed interest among all fanciers involved. If you have an opportunity to embark on something similar – jump at it!