George the cockatoo written into Friend In Hand pub sale contract
George the cockatoo lived at one of Sydney’s most famous pubs for more than a decade. But when the brothers, who own the pub decided to sell up, they weren’t sure what to do with the bird with a colourful history. So they wrote a clause into the contract he came with the $10 million pub.
EXCLUSIVE: If you spend $10 million to buy this bird, we’ll throw in a pub.
This was basically the pitch that secured the sale of one of Sydney’s most famous watering holes.
George the sulphur crested cockatoo has been granted special indemnity to remain at the pub she’s called home for 13 years — Glebe’s Friend in Hand — until the end of her days, after pub owner Peter Byrne had the clause written into the hotel’s official sales inventory.
Alongside the usual items like bar stools and plasma TVs, the sales inventory stated that the bird must also remain at the pub and continue to be cared for by the prospective owner.
Byrne says the decision became a running joke among locals that it was the bird on the market for $10 million … with a pub thrown in for free.
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“My brother Michael had come to the decision that it was about the right time to sell and we sat down and had this conversation about George and where he would go,” says Mr Byrne, whose parents, the late Peter and Marie Byrne, bought the pub 35 years ago.
“We both couldn’t stand the idea that one of us would take him and then he (George is actually a she, see story below) would spend the rest of his life in a cage and with no one to talk to when we were out of the house.
“Aside from us, George has made some very close friends here. He loves people and loves walking around the bar and pinching stray chips.
“We realised that there’s no way we would take him with us, and that’s when we decided that he was non-negotiable.”
Thankfully, new owner and former Wallabies front-rower Bill Young — who paid close to $10.5 million for the pub last week — had no issue with the stipulation.
According to the selling agent from HTL Property, Young requested to keep the bird prior to seeing the sales inventory.
“But it is certainly something that I have never seen on a pub inventory,” says HTL’s managing director Andrew Jolliffe. “It was what you might call … unique.”
The sale of the Friend in Hand comes as pub sales continue to boom in NSW with almost a billion dollars in transactions in the financial year leading up to June 30.
In the past week the Oxford Hotel in Drummoyne was sold to the Laundy family for $42 million — a deal also brokered by HTL Property.
“It’s no coincidence we’ve sold two significant Sydney hotels for over $55 million in the four days post the Reserve Bank’s latest rate cut,” Jolliffe said.
“And with another $300 million worth under agreement, the pub market is officially the most active, compelling and durable we can recall.”
* With apologies to Slim Dusty
A BIRD IN THE HADN IS WORTH IT
George has had a colourful life in the Friend in Hand — once cheating death after chewing through a cable behind a TAB terminal and sparking a fraud probe.
“Sparks were flying everywhere,” says Peter Byrne, who had to explain the incident to an investigator acting on behalf of the TAB.
“They launched a big investigation into betting fraud because they thought someone had deliberately cut the cable and tried to hack into the system … I didn’t want to admit George chewed through it. “But eventually I had to come clean.”
In 2014 she was “birdnapped” by a patron. CCTV footage captured George cowering from the man before he picked her up and walked off.
Police retrieved her in Wentworth Park later that day.
And the latest twist in this feathered tale came two years ago when George stunned everyone in the pub by laying an egg.
“So George is actually Georgina,” laughed Mr Byrne. “But we still refer to ‘him’ as Georgie.”