Property Point 28 November

Up until my summer holidays a couple of years ago I didn’t know that cockatoos had quite a sweet tooth.

I knew they were friendly, smart and noisy and I was aware that feeding them was a no-no but until my trip to Hamilton Island that summer I wasn’t fully aware of their sweet tooth.

During that Hammo visit I also found out what happens when you leave the sliding doors open overnight to the balcony in the flash unit you have rented.

We had been on Hammo for four or five days in one of those beautiful two-level units with a huge balcony over-looking the Coral Sea.

The kids were 16 and 20 and had largely been doing their own thing so my wife and I were able to enjoy a few dinners and drinks with friends.

When it came to our last night we probably indulged a little more than we should have, in light of our morning departure the next day, and we ended up having late-night drinks on our balcony before crashing for the evening.

There is a strong suggestion among family members that I was the last one up and the last to leave the balcony and go to bed that night.

That was certainly the consensus the next morning when everyone awoke to the balcony doors wide open and the enormous downstairs living area looking like it had been ransacked by marauding primates.

Any food that had been left on benchtops had been attacked and sampled but it was those long, thin, straw-shaped packets of sugar provided for guests that attracted the most attention from our uninvited guests.

There were a few extra things I became aware of after emerging from the upstairs master bedroom: cockatoos are incredibly dexterous with their beaks, somehow they know that those cylindrical little paper packets contain sugar, a unit gets very hot and humid when the sliding doors are left open overnight and sugar granules create a horrible, sticky mess on  ceramic floor tiles in a humid environment.

I looked around for the kids but they had miraculously disappeared so I spent the next few hours on my hands and knees scrubbing the caked-on sugar granules off the beautiful white ceramic tiles. Those cockatoos had managed to spread the sugar over most of the tiles and it was hard work and pretty much the last thing I felt like doing in my final ours at Hammo.

But, of course, you can’t leave a place in that state so you do what you have to do.

It’s a bit like when a house is sold and the sellers clean up and leave it for the next owners. It’s not necessarily what you feel like doing but it’s the right thing.

It is a wonderful experience for the buyers when they open the door to their new home and the place is spotless. The walls are clean, the floors are mopped, the cupboards and draws have been wiped out, the oven has been cleaned properly and all the dust and grime that had been hidden behind furniture and other belongings has been vacuumed up and removed.

The alternative, when the place has not been cleaned properly, is a real disappointment for the buyers and can create a real let-down at what should be an exciting, momentous occasion.

We always remind sellers to clean the place and most people don’t need the reminder because, as a matter of courtesy, they want to do the right thing by the people they are handing the place over to.

And, in my experience, 99 per cent of the time sellers do the right thing and buyers get to enjoy the experience of moving into the home they fell in love with.

Leaving the place clean is good karma … but don’t expect the kids to help you.

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