Charlie earns loudmouth reputation

Just inside the gates of the Geraldton Golf Club is a 70-year-old shack that used to be the club’s bar, but its current mix of inhabitants are a vintage entirely of their own.

Live-in groundskeeper Ian Taplin, 84, is the one human resident of this humble abode (and has been keeping the place tidy for the last 34 years), but Ian’s fame as a local mascot may be topped only by his corella companion Charlie, who is believed to be 105 years old.

The pair of them are watched over by their attentive guard dog Zulu.

Taplin’s early life began in Queensland, where he has fond memories of school at a farm in Buderim.

“Shearing was a good education for me, I learnt a lot,” he said.

“I could study blokes as easy as anything. When I’m talking to them, there’s blokes who I know are fair dinkum and blokes who I think aren’t fair dinkum; I can tell now, I’m not a fool by any means.

“I had it good until I decided to go bush. That was when I lost my father. He was a totally, permanently incapacitated returned soldier, and he died in 1948. I should have stayed. Everything was paid for. I would have had a terrifically good education, but I just couldn’t get along with the headmaster so I pulled out.”

Taplin first passed through Geraldton in 1957, as a strapping young shearer with an average speed of 170 sheep a day, and a record of 235.

He was on his way to Gnaraloo, though his prowess quickly earned him a place in the Kimberley, working almost year-round.

The shearing culture lead to a life of hard drinking though, and after a serious stomach operation in 1977 where, Taplin said, about two-thirds of his stomach had to be scooped out, and he booked himself in for a dry-out at Rosella House.

A few years later he found himself offered the job of groundskeeper, and he got to work ripping up doublegees, laying down gardens and caring for birds.

Charlie certainly wasn’t the first parrot Taplin acquired and, as an avid bird lover, he constructed 30 aviaries on the golf course in the early 80s using materials being thrown out from the dismantling of the nearby air force base.

“I just jokingly used to say to the golf club, ‘you’ll have to shift the putting green because I need the territory for another aviary’,” Taplin said.

“But in 1982, when everything was flourishing, I was diagnosed with the (prostate) tumours.

“I had to have eight weeks radiation treatment at (Sir) Charles Gairdner, and of course someone had to look after the aviaries, but by that point I had nearly 330 birds. We could only keep a few; that’s about when we got Charlie.”

Ian said the person who could confirm the bird’s age was Arnold Budd, who had owned Charlie for the 40 years previous, and now lived in Cairns.

ThoughThe Geraldton Guardian was unable to find him for comment, Taplin recalled the story of Charlie’s first owner from Arnold’s telling.

“The old bloke got him in 1911, and he was an alcoholic, apparently,” he said.

“So he would come home to his wife, who would yell out, ‘you drunken old bastard!’ and he would sing out Roll Out the Barrel, which Charlie still does to this day. People hear him at one o’clock in the morning.

“He started yelling it out to the streets a little too much though, so they had to get rid of him, gave him to me.”

Charlie continues to be a loudmouth, and Taplin said this caused some confusion when golfers come back late to store their clubs.

“If they’d been playing at Dongara or Kalbarri, they wouldn’t get here till about half past 10, and he (Charlie) would screech out ‘whaddya doin’,” Taplin said.

“They’d turn around and say, ‘it’s all right Ian, we’re just bringing our babies back’. They thought it was me!

“So I’d yell out to them ‘it’s not me, it’s that bloody old bastard in the cage who’s getting me in trouble!’ But it was fun, it was.”

Taplin said the club had promised to take care of Charlie after he himself passes on, though the bird can sometimes scare people who try to feed him when he wants to play.

“That’s my only worry, I wouldn’t want him to starve, and they’ve got to get him the right seed that he likes,” Taplin said.

“I’ve got it all written down on a big page so that they can have it in the office and be prepared.”