It’s a shame there’s no photographic evidence, but legend has it, this hot coffee-swilling, branch-stripping, thong-hating cockatoo used to love nothing more than being dinked around town on the handlebars of Rodney Smith’s BMX.
You could be forgiven for being suspicious about that, seeing as very little gets away uncaptured in this world of portable digital devices and social media.
But we’re talking 50 years ago.
Yes. Charlie the cockatoo is somewhere between 50 and 60 years of age.
The Smith family, including eight children, welcomed the pet parrot more than half a century ago on June 19, 1975.
Rodney Smith was six years old. Charlie was estimated to be about the same.
Being the bird’s chivalrous BMX chauffeur, he became Charlie’s favourite, and, all these years later, he still is.
Charlie now lives at Emerald Bank, inside Riverside Gardens, which is owned by The Smith Family.
Three brothers run the place: Rodney, Charlie’s favourite; Murray, who Charlie tolerates because he needs someone to look after him in Rodney’s absence; and Larry, Charlie’s nemesis.
Charlie doesn’t like Larry because he used to spray water at him when he was a kid.
A sign on Charlie’s cage says he can dance, talk, jump, sing and whistle very loudly, as well as bite.
“If you jump up and down, I’ll copy you,” it says.
“If you make a noise like a chook, sometimes I’ll copy that too.”
The Smiths say that pre-1980s, Charlie would actually walk among the chooks bopping his head up and down like he was one.
Charlie’s cheeky cockatoo character doesn’t end there.
Most pet cockies have a few human words in their vocabulary, such as ‘hello’, ‘cocky’, and ‘see ya’, which Charlie still keeps in his cache today, but back in the day when he was surrounded by a bustling household filled with children, his favourite one to screech out was, ‘Mum!’.
While Mum probably didn’t find it that amusing, having absolutely no need to add another mouth to the chorus no doubt constantly chanting her name, she may not have found Charlie’s imitations of her funny either.
“What have you got on your feet?” the parrot was known to question members of the house.
Maybe he asked the question in case the answer was thongs, which he has a hatred for.
He would chase people wearing them while they flip-flopped away as he tried to peck them off their feet.
He was also somewhat of a watchdog around the house in his own unique way, when it served his own purpose.
For instance, if Charlie didn’t like one of Rodney’s girlfriends, he would hiss and squawk if she got too close.
Despite trying to scare some away, the Smiths maintain Charlie is actually a lover of humans.
He’s been in the public view since 1982 and loved seeing people at the nursery in its various locations every day, so when the nursery was closed during COVID-19 lockdowns, it was confusing for the Smiths’ feathered friend.
Luckily they were there regularly to maintain the plants and pack and dispatch orders for delivery.
They built a platform for him to be inside the premises and would take videos of him dancing and performing to post on socials for locked-down customers who were also missing the perky parrot.
Charlie doesn’t fly away when he’s released from his cage and if he does wander off at the nursery, the lads said he was easy to find by following the trail of destruction — stripped branches, dug-out holes — he left behind him.
He shared his space for a good part of his life, 23 years, with the nursery cat, who sadly passed during the first lockdown.
Charlie is generally a healthy old fella, having visited the vet only twice in his life, both times in the past 12 months.
The last time he was diagnosed as being overweight, so he’s now on a food-restrictive diet.
“He’s mainly on sunflowers now because the mixture he was having before was playing havoc with him,” Rodney said.
With a little trimming down, shaping up and following doctor’s orders, this lovable and entertaining specimen of Aussie wildlife might add many more years to the already outstanding innings he’s playing.