Chooks have played an important part in our history, believe it or not. When my mother's great grandfather came down from Mount Cole, in the Western District to Officer he transported his family and all his good on a bullock dray. He even camped for few days on the Melbourne Common, to rest his team.

I went looking for location of the Common but in an hour the closest I came was overseas. There is a Whistlewood Common in South Derbyshire in the UK, but I'm sure he didn't go that way.
The point, anyway, is that he had a 'house cow' tethered to the back of the dray and, swinging beneath it (the dray, not the cow) was a chook cage. Apparently the chooks would still lay even when on the move.
Chooks were an important source of protein and diet variation back in the day. With no refrigeration eggs did not stay fresh for long and if you wanted fresh eggs you were wise to have your own chooks.
Then, when the chooks got too old to lay, you ate them. By then of course, you'd let a broody chook hatch her eggs to supply the next generation in the chook house. Some of the chickens were female, so they lived. Some were not, and they did not survive long at all. One rooster at a time was plenty. If there were not enough, a second broody hen would be allowed to hatch her eggs, I'm still unsure how one tells the sex of a small chicken, and I'm not particularly interested in knowing.
Roosters are an example of a change in our lifestyles. A few houses down the road the council by-laws officer told a bloke to get rid of his rooster because it was disturbing the neighbours in the early mornings. That would not have happened 30 years ago because every farm had a rooster, and every rooster crowed in the mornings. That was one of the comforting sounds of routine.
What brought all this chookery to aging mind was that my neighbour has gone away for a fortnight and asked us to look after his eight Isa Browns. Too easy, I thought. Check for food and water every second day, bring home the eggs and eat them.
It did not work out quite that simply. The eggs were fine. Isa Browns are very good layers and their somewhat palatial chook house made it easy to collect the eggs.
Back on the farm at Longwarry the chooks decided where they would lay and it could take quite a while to collect the eggs, and even longer to locate a new nest. We even had chooks lay in the tangled branches of the cypress trees when the fallen leaves and sticks had made a platform. They laid under the house and they laid in the hayshed.
Our chooks back then, and this is a big change, were rather wild creatures who made their own way in the world. They were not quite feral, but they were getting there.
Of course, come Christmas, one or two of the older ones would be captured and kept in a cage made from a large wooden box. They were encouraged to fatten, and they played a major role in our Christmas, though perhaps not one they would have chosen.
Mind you, though I know that old men (of which I am becoming one) always – well, often – think things were better in the past, but I am utterly convinced that a genuinely free-range chook with a few miles on the clock, so to speak, will taste much better than the birds we buy in our supermarkets. I hate to be rude but the modern chook has a taste like a wet cardboard carton. It is probably our cheapest meat, and so it should be.
Anyway, one big historical change is that people who own a few chooks now have chook pens. That works well when the chooks are inside the pens, but Dave told me that his chooks could be let out into the paddock for an hour or two each day, and that if I lift up the little chook-flap in the gate they'd all come back in the late afternoon. Great plan, Dave. I believed you, but I've usually had a few chooks of my own and I should have known better.
There is always one chook that does not want to go into the pen, and while you chase that one all the others come out again to see the fun. The secret is to stay calm because rounding up excited chooks makes herding cats seem simple.
Dave has eight chooks and I had thought of leaving the last one out for the fox, but he has children and they like the chooks, and I'm soft-hearted anyway. It took nearly an hour to get them all into the pen and safety.
Of course, most of us simply buy our eggs at the supermarket – that is, by the way generally cheaper than having your own flock. It is also far easier, as an egg carton stays where you put it, unlike a chook. Our chooks were easy to feed. They got the scraps from the kitchen and if they wanted more they had to find it for themselves, and they did.
Not only do we simply buy eggs now. We also simply buy our chooks for the table. This will be seen as a great leap forward to anyone who killed, gutted and plucked a chook in the old days. I remember it well, and especially do I remember the smell of wet feathers. Some things you can never un-smell.
The chooks were first beheaded and that was a gruesome business because sometimes the body took a little while to realise its head was missing. That left blood over what could be a large area.
The chook was plucked in a tub of hot water, which made the feathers easier to pull out. This process was olfactory unpleasant. Once plucked the chook would be dried and a burning piece of newspaper would be used to burn off the little hairs and feathers that were too small to pluck.
This all had to be done only a day or two before the roast chicken dinner was planned, because we had no refrigerator and the Coolgardie safe never got things really cold. It did keep the flies away, though.
It has just dawned on me that I might read this to Dave's chooks this afternoon. It might act as a warning – keep up this disobedience and you will become the next Sunday chook. They won't know that very few people catch and kill their own these days. I might try it.