Raucous Gang invades ALP Birthday Bash
One of the party goers, veteran reporter , Ian Mackay , shown here with his wife , Luella , who cut her birthday cake with the precision of a surgeon , said the cockies reminded him of the time when on assignment he toured the distinctive Bangkok house of American spy Jim Thompson , who had vanished in 1967.
Naturally, he uttered the obvious Aussie greeting , "Hello, Cocky!"
The response was extraordinary, according to Ian .Looking somewhat down in the mouth/beak, the bird had raised its rheumy eyes, looked at him , and enthusiastically responded , "Hello,Cocky!"
It may have been the first time in years the Cockatoo had been greeted in English and with an Aussie accent .
The Jim Thompson House guide included the following photograph of him with his pet cockatoo, called Cocky , on his shoulder .
Ian believes it was the same caged bird with whom he had exchanged greetings .
He wrote a piece on Jim Thompson's House and despatched it to Melbourne for the widely read A PLace in the Sun column in the Sun New Pictorial , with a circulation of 600,000.
James Harrison Wilson Thompson , an architect in New York from 1931 to l940, designed houses for cashed up members of high society . Quitting the Delaware National Guard, he became an operative in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) , forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency .
After the war , he was assigned to the US legation in Bangkok. He set himself up in business reviving the Thai silk trade from the l950s to the l960s. His residence was filled with much South- East Asian art .
While in Malaysia with some friends in March 1967, staying at Moonlight Cottage , he went for a walk in the Cameron Highlands , and was never seen again. An extensive search involving the Malaysian Army, bloodhounds, police , even Gurkhas, reward hunters and large other groups failed to find any trace of him .
There was wild speculation about his disappearance ... he had been kidnapped, murdered , went on a secret assignment connected with ending the Vietnam War, had been eliminated by business enemies .
A few months after his disappearance, his sister was brutally murdered in Chester County, Pennsylvania , nobody charged .
NOTE : Ian Mackay received royal treatment when he was in Thailand . As a television reporter , based in Singapore for a time , he made a documentary on the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). When the King and Queen of Thailand visited Australia , Ian was introduced to them in Government House , Adelaide .They said to drop in and see them if he ever came to Bangkok, which he did .
