Season starts

Horsham Homing Club members will race their homing pigeons on two lines during their 2018 season.

The first line takes in various race points starting from Ouyen and then onto Broken Hill and other NSW towns.

A second south-east line, with the first race from Lake Bolac, starts in August and continues through to Port Albert and Devonport, Tasmania, later in the race season.

The club had its first races for the season from Ouyen to Horsham, a 178-kilometre airline distance.

In racing at the weekend, pigeons flew in totally different weather conditions to the first event from Ouyen.

Ouyen is a 180km air-line flight to Horsham and a fresh northerly wind helped the release with the leading pigeons into Horsham averaging 107 kilometres an hour, or 1801 metres a minute.this was almost twice as fast as the leading pigeons the previous weekend when they encountered a strong south-westerly wind.

Bill Hartigan’s entry was home in one hour, 41 minutes and 52 seconds, at 1801.18 metres a minute, from Karen Monday 1.14.08 at 1794.53 and Rob Nelson 1.41.21 at 1790.62.

Ernie Blandthorn from Murtoa won the first event, his winning bird averaging 57.5 kilometres an hour, or 954.25 metres a minute for the 169-kilometre flight to its Murtoa loft.

Blandthorn won the event from John Muszkieta, 923.26 metres a minute, Brian Watts was third, 912.14, and Bruce Rentsch fourth, 911.21.

This weekend’s race will be from Mildura.