A dozen eggs, cooked and well travelled

This story from 100 years ago comes from the Quorn Mercury via the Adelaide Observer, Saturday 25 April, 1908.

“A workman, while dismantling a sheep van at the Quorn Locomotive Workshops, discovered a nest of hen eggs (12 in number) in a recess on top of the bogey, between the body of the vehicle and the axles. Judging by the appearance they had been there for a number of years, and the railway department had carried them free of charge for thousands of miles. With the heat of the north they had been boiled or baked quite hard, and the shell was discoloured and brittle. As the vans are in constant use, the laying of the eggs is something of a mystery, and the only feasible solution seems to be that the nest must have been made during the drought, when the vans were not in great demand, and sometimes stood on the sidings for days at a stretch. As there are no fowls within a likely distance of the local sidings it is thought that the hen with such a peculiar taste for a nest must have been at Petersburg.”