The great St Patrick’s College pouter pigeon debacle
Image: Mum's plan was to get her pigeons too drunk to fly, then take them home to sober up
Sydneysider: A personal journey
I grew up, a couple of doors down Edgar St Strathfield from St Patrick’s College, a Catholic high school of some note. They say that the ICAC inquiry into Eddie Obeid’s business dealings looks like a reunion of old Patricians, what with Eddie having attended, plus his five sons and their solicitor, Michael Bowe. Apparently three more lawyers appearing at the inquiry, including Geoff Watson SC (on the Commission’s side) are old boys, as is Nick di Girolamo who heads up Australian Water Holdings, about whose dealings there has been some fascinating evidence.
Eddie was going to St Pats when I lived at 5 Edgar St and our paths crossed briefly, a couple of times, years later.
Although neither of my parents were Catholics and I never attended, the proximity of St Pats played a big part in my childhood. For one thing, the school grounds were completely open (except for the tennis courts) and on the weekends I often rode my skateboard on the hardstand. And I practiced goal kicking and rod casting, and flew model aircraft on the oval.
And then there was the college’s the much-anticipated annual fete. With an eye to raising as much money as possible from the faithful, the Brothers opened their fete from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. There were lots of things for kids to do, and a few pennies went a long way.
There was always a big chocolate wheel in front of which donated prizes would be arrayed. The Brothers sold numbered tickets and spun the wheel frequently.
It happened that a couple of years running, our beloved cat Tabitha dropped a litter of kittens two or three weeks before the fete, so dad took any kittens he couldn’t give away at work down to the fete in a box and the Brothers stuck it in front of the chocolate wheel and people took the kittens as prizes. My parents jocularly regarded this as evidence that Catholics would bet on anything.
And then there was the the Great St Pats Pouter Pigeon Debacle. My mother, being an English countrywoman, decided we must have a dovecote with fancy pigeons. Dad constructed a very spiffy multi-level job out of a 44 gallon drum with a thatched roof made from palm fronds. It was set up in the backyard and stocked with expensive white pouter and pouter-fantail pigeons, which, supposedly, couldn’t fly well, and so would remain close to the hand that fed.
Alas, the young Patricians were not the only flock to grace St Pats. It was also home to a huge mob of feral pigeons and they soon discovered that our backyard had become a wonderful source of free food. Then one day, when mum shooed the interlopers away, they took off with a great clattering of wings and her beautiful white pigeons departed with them and flew to St Pats.
Being an English countrywoman, mum knew what to do. Pigeons don’t hold their liquor well, and one way to catch them is to feed them wheat soaked in alcohol. On a Sunday afternoon, when the school was deserted, she took a bowl of whisky-soaked wheat down to the school. The pigeons used to hang out in a sunken concrete-paved courtyard and her plan was to scatter the wheat and hide nearby until the pigeons were too drunk to fly, grab her birds, and take them home to sober up.
As she was about to put the plan into effect she heard footsteps approaching so she slipped inside the boys’ toilet that fronted one side of the courtyard. She skulked in the gloom but the footsteps came closer and turned into the toilet. Suddenly, reeking of drink, she was face to face with a young Brother in a black cassock. He yelped and fled, and so did mum. Did he, for years afterwards and over a beer, regale his colleagues with his tale of meeting a drunken woman in the boys toilet, or was he perhaps, permanently traumatised, thinking he’d seen, in that terrible and luminous instant, a vision of The Devil? I guess I’ll never know.
I don’t recall mum ever recapturing her pigeons but she dined out on the tale for years. It was not as thrilling as the story about how, in the war, she’d staked out the beach near her radar station with a Thompson Gun to ward off an expected German commando raid that never eventuated, but it was dad who told that story, never mum.
