Hobart Poultry Show and a Bookcase

It was another one of those occasions when the advertising preceding the event made me think that there would be signs as I approached Glenorchy to indicate where I would find the Hobart Showgrounds and the chook show I was so looking forward to seeing. Alas! Not one sign did I see but Glenorchy is not that big so eventually I found a street full of cars and followed the people..... but the sign on the gate only mentioned a gun show! I asked at the entrance and the young man said yes..... just walk right through the showgrounds to the far corner and I would find the Southern Tasmanian Bantam Club show. I imagined having to walk all this way back, carrying a couple of chooks in a box!

Remarkably, that is exactly what this old woman was doing. In the basket on the front of her walker was a plastic crate holding 2 chickens.... I wonder how far she had come! I was so surprised that by the time I got myself organised and managed to extract the camera from my bag, she had well and truly passed me, otherwise I would have asked her to show me her purchase and really had something interesting to write instead of this drivel.

Inside the poultry pavilion, which was unsigned again (and in a sea of possible sheds) were hundreds and hundreds of cages of chooks, ducks, turkeys and maybe other things. They came in every colour and size imaginable. A lot of the cages were empty because the inmates had been sold in the first hour the show was open!  I have decided I would like to have ducks because I just loved all the ducks in the show but I managed not to buy any this  day because I have no idea what they need.

 

 

So, what on earth is this? At least the ducks looked like ducks!

 

 

If you wanted to buy a particular bird, you removed the sign from its cage, as these people are doing, you took it to the desk, paid your money and they got the bird out and gave it to you in a box..... all very organised.

Today, Monday, the day after the show, I met a woman at the Community Garden, just so coincidentally..... who has 70 or so birds, mostly ducks! She has asked me around to see her setup later this week.... I could hardly believe it when she told me..... this kind of thing keeps happening to me here at Cygnet!

On the way back to the car I wandered through another market, this time row after row of bric-a-brac and shocking smelling fast food and hundreds of fat people all stuffing their faces.... enough to make me sick. But way in the distance I could just see one lone stall with furniture, all set out on the grass and there I found a small, very solid bookcase just ever so perfect for my cookbooks. Here it is in my kitchen.

I also saw, amongst all the junk and the bad food, a little reminder of France.... ("Would you like a piece of chocolate cake?") ....  but made in China!

 

I sat down here to write something very thought-provoking tonight but somehow the Southern Tasmanian Bantam Club show got in the way! Now I have finished making runny quince jelly and am too tired to write any more.