What makes your Nillumbik home town/area unique? Who are the characters who have made it so? What sites have significance and why? During 2005 Nillumbik Shire Council and the Literary Reference Group invited members of the community to respond to these questions, to show us the history and flavour of your place – then and now – in a 500 word anecdote. The following article was written by Sheila Dixon who passed away in April 2008. Her daughter has kindly given permission to share her story, originally titled : The Local hoons the cockatoos
To wake up to the sound of the birds in my house in Kangaroo Ground is not quite the romantic entry into the morning that one expects. No, it’s a major cacophany of screeching cockatoos doing their best to wake everyone from here to eternity. Sometimes they are around my house and sometimes I hear them over at my friend Barb. Morning is the cockies ‘joyous time and they certainly let it all hang out. Sometimes I go outside and scream ‘Shuddup’. I feel better but it means nothing to them. One of my favourite times is when they are in love. They sit on my balustrade and gently groom each other, tenderly nibbling faces and necks and then, within one minute are pecking off flowers in my pots on the deck. They just like the flower heads, they don’t eat them, just drop them on the deck and stare at them. Which of course means that I have to drape my deck in swathes of bird netting. It just doesn’t look the same. That’s the bad part, after all they were here first, but to see them flying overhead is really something. Under their wings is a pale washed yellow to match up with their yellow crest which they keep streamlined back for flying. The flying in groups is very important in the evening for that’s when the roosting site is chosen. Which side of the river? Which trees? It was exactly the same when I camped by the Murray. Great flocks of them trying to sort out which looked like the most desirable redgums, this side or that side. On the sandbar by the river we would put our drinks down and watch to see which was their choice for tonight. One of my favourite times is when their babies have hatched. There is this dreadful whine and I know it’s hatching time. There they are, parent and chick pathetically looking up with starvation in the eyes and waiting for the handout. The parent, trying to look the other way and block out this rather trying child, but succumbing in the end with sustenance. The food handout is a rather noisy regurgitation of seeds just eaten. But the sight of a lone cockie in a cage or on a stand makes me sad. Let them pick my flowers or peck my house, at least they are free here being real Australian Cockatoos.
© Sheila Dixon 2005
