The Bin Chicken Finally Gets The Credit It Deserves With This Great David Attenborough Parody

For decades, the bin chicken has skulked on the periphery of the Australian cultural imagination. It’s watched, dejected, as the kookaburra and the cockatoo became emblems of Australian states. It’s seen you smiling up at rosellas. It’s consoled itself by quietly, shamefully, mulching through some garbage juice-soaked Oporto chippies seasoned with garbage juice in a nearby bin.

Now, it is finally getting its due. This fine and definitely not revolting specimen has been granted its moment in the spotlight with a Planet Earth parody from Sydney filmmaker David Johns and his friend Matt Eastwood. The three-minute clip was posted on YouTube this afternoon and published through Facebook by The Betoota Advocate where it’s earned more than 215,000 views and 9,000 likes within the past hour.

When asked who was behind the incredible voiceover, Betoota Advocate editor Clancy Overell told Junkee. “David put the call out for the voice work on Gumtree”. “It was responded to immediately by an unnamed London-based ‘media identity’ — however, given the fact that Sir Attenborough has had a gag order placed on him by the Australian Liberal Party for his controversial Great Barrier Reef series, we have good reason to believe it might actually be him chasing a bit of pocket money.”

Huge if true.

Johns has stated that he intended the video as a kind of redemption for the gutter bird. “We thought the much-maligned Australian ibis deserved a little more love,” he told Pedestrian. “Not everyone in the world knows how great this bird is.”

With the video quickly going viral, the satire site editor is taking a different tact. “We would like Australians to embrace the parallels between the life of the ibis and ourselves,” Overell says. “Much like the current political discourse forged by One Nation and Cory Bernardi — our street birdlife have evolved to the point where they feed off nothing more than the rubbish that sits at the top of the bin.

“Ask yourselves, aren’t we all bin chickens?”