Veteran Australian journalist , Ian Mackay , now residing on Magnetic Island , has a wealth of stories and anecdotes . One of them surfaced recently in Little Darwin in his account of touring the ornate Bangkok home of American spy and Thai silk businessman Jim Thompson who vanished mysterious in Malaysia in 1967 , his sister brutally murdered in America several months later.
The house contained Thompson's pet Australian Sulphur Crested Cockatoo, named Cocky .
In l962, Ian , on the left, was in Kenya for Channel 7 Adelaide with cameraman Brian Taylor , photographed above with an unexpected safari transport vehicle- a Volkswagen Beetle -in the famous Amboseli Game Reserve .
