A few years back I bumped into an acquaintance who was known from time to time to indulge in illegal substances.
With great excitement be grabbed me by the arm outside the old Mercury building in Macquarie St, pointing towards Franklin Square across the road.
“Black cockie,” he was shouting, “magnificent to see one in the city. You bewty.”
I was about to ask him what he had been on, when I heard not one but a whole party of yellow-tailed black cockatoos calling from the uppermost branches of the elms in the square. It was early winter, snow in the air, and the cockie-watcher speculated they had come down from the mountain.
“Snow on the way, cockies in town”, said my friend before he went on his way, echoing Tasmanian folklore which says the sight of black cockies always signals bad weather.
Taking time out from my Saturday shift at the Mercury a little later I ventured into the square to check if the cockies were still there, but they had moved on. All I could hear instead was the incessant two-note call of spotted pardalotes in those same elms.
Franklin Square has never been on my birdwatching itinerary, especially after finding a discarded hypodermic needle in one of the washbasins on another Saturday when I had visited the public toilets there.
But in recent weeks I have looked anew at the square, after an extensive restoration effort to restore the mini-park in the centre of town to its former Victorian glory. And how graceful and elegant the old lady looks now the work is complete.
I am a big fan of city parks and have no problem with the exotic, foreign deciduous trees which decorate them when some environmental activists, the “tree police”, advocate the planting of native species.
Parks in Australian cities – such as Franklin Square and St Davids Park close by – were created in the Victorian period and have become as important a part to our heritage and history as rows of Georgian and Victorian buildings.
And surprisingly, birds like the black cockies can find food and nesting sites there. Wattlebirds, honeyeaters and parrots are especially fond of the pollen and nectar produced by exotic plants such as camellias in spring, and the seeds of European silver birch in autumn. Black cockatoos come into city parks to prise hibernating bugs from under the bark of ageing oaks, elms and beeches.
Our parks also play an important role in protecting trees which are rapidly vanishing from their home countries because of forest clearance, pollution and disease.
The stately elm has vanished from Britain, a victim of dutch elm disease which has spread throughout northern Europe. The disease is caused by a fungus which is believed to have originated in Asia, but thankfully it is so far absent from Australia.
I haven’t visited Franklin Square since I retired from the Mercury four years ago, but this winter I’ve been walking the rejuvenated park in search of my own black cockie “high”.