ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Betoota Heights resident has returned home this morning to his seven-figure shitbox on Rothery Road to find a fucking cockatoo chewing through the cladding on the side of his home.
The home belongs to Stan and Mandy Roughton, a young couple that have given their all to buy a home that has a usable life of 25 years. It was built during the town’s great expansion into the Simpson Desert some 20 years ago. Sydney Olympic-era architecture is a key feature of the first homes in Betoota Heights. Sharp and soft design. The first generation of glorified tents built in this country.
Now, Stan is seeing something no human has seen since the time when it was built. The breathable membrane under the cladding.
“You fucking CUNT!” Stan yelled at the top of his lungs as he got out of his leased RAV4.
Mandy told him to stop shouting but only after a hand placed on his shoulder didn’t work.
As they pulled on the cracked driveway from the potholed road, Stan saw a cockatoo chewing on the faux-timber cladding above the garage door.
“Fuck!”
The cockatoo was startled by Stan and flew down onto the seat beside the door where Stan and Mandy used to take their shoes off and leave them. They did that until the State bought an apartment block down the way to use as some sort of halfway house slash public housing facility—then their shoes started to go missing.
“You fucking arsehole!” Stan said to the bird, which was now brushing its beak on the jarrah armrest.
He knew that he wasn’t going to hurt the bird, that would be un-Australian and weak-gutted. So Stan yelled at the bird while it stared back at him. The bird took the spray and seemed to nod along in a condescending fashion to each point Stan made.
“You flying arsehole! You winged cunt! Fuck off and go chew a tree!” he continued.
Mandy had already gone inside.
“Shoo!! Fuck off! You fucking thing! Shoooooo!”
The closer he got to the bird, the more the bird showed a disinterest in what he was saying. A few moments passed. Stan sighed and went inside and lay down on the couch with a hand on his forehead.
“This is going to cost thousands to fix!” he said as a scraping sound began on the other side of the wall.
“That cheeky cunt! I’m going to kill him!”
More to come.
