THE UPPER NORTH SHORE CHRONICLE – WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Circa 2026 – The Leak They Couldn’t Plug
“KILLARA: WHERE THE KILLING IS DONE BY PLUMBING AND PARROTS”
By Our Special Correspondent
Roseville. The name evokes images of manicured gardens, heritage-listed mansions, and the kind of genteel respectability that comes with generations of old money. It is a suburb of wide, tree-lined streets, magnificent Federation homes, and—if the rumours are to be believed—a secret history that its residents would rather forget.
For three of the world’s most recognisable women—who, in a convergence of celebrity real estate misfortune, all found themselves renting neighbouring properties on the same leafy cul-de-sac—Roseville was not a haven of tranquillity. It was a battleground. A soggy, feathered, psychologically devastating battleground that would push them to the very edge of their sanity.
Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Catherine Zeta-Jones sat down with the Herald to finally unburden themselves of the horrors they endured during their year in Sydney’s most deceptively charming suburb. And before we begin, Catherine Zeta-Jones has a rather unconventional theory about the suburb’s origins.
The interview began, as these things often do, with a seemingly innocuous question about how they had spent their mornings in Roseville. It was Rihanna who answered first, her voice carrying the weary resignation of a woman who had been forced to confront her own reflection one too many times.
“Honey, we spent every morning in that damn living room doing workouts we hated,” she said, adjusting her sunglasses despite the overcast Sydney sky. “Catherine had us on this… this regime. Leg lifts. Squats. Something she called ‘the pelvic tilt of eternal youth.’ I swear to God, I have never hated my own thighs more than I did in that house.”
Gaga nodded vigorously, her platinum hair pulled back in a severe bun that suggested she had only recently stopped sweating. “She made us do Pilates, Rihanna. Pilates. On hardwood floors. While she counted in Welsh under her breath like some kind of beautiful, terrifying drill sergeant. I kept thinking, ‘I am a Grammy-winning artist. I have performed at Madison Square Garden. Why am I doing bicycle crunches at seven in the morning while Catherine Zeta-Jones judges my form?'”
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“Form is everything, Stefani,” Catherine interjected, her tone crisp and unapologetic. “You were arching your back. You were going to throw your spine out before you even got to the chorus of ‘Bad Romance.’ I was doing you a favour.”
“A favour,” Gaga repeated flatly. “She called it a favour. My abs called it a war crime.”
Rihanna leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “The worst part was the mirror. Catherine had this—this thing about the mirror. She’d stand us in front of it and make us… assess. ‘Look at your silhouette,’ she’d say. ‘Own your silhouette.’ And I’m standing there in my Fenty sweats thinking, ‘I own a lingerie line, Catherine. I have seen my silhouette from every conceivable angle. I do not need to own it at eight in the morning.'”
“But you did need to own it,” Catherine said, crossing her legs with the practiced elegance of a woman who had never once been photographed at a bad angle. “We all did. We were three women of a certain age—”
“A certain age?” Rihanna interrupted, her eyebrows shooting upward. “Certain age? Catherine, you’re the only one who’s actually—”
“Anyway,” Catherine continued, steamrolling over her, “we needed to maintain our figures. The paparazzi were relentless. They were hiding in the hedges. I saw one of them try to climb the jacaranda tree outside my bedroom window. I was not about to give them a single unflattering angle.”
“So we did the exercises,” Gaga said, her voice hollow. “Every morning. Lunges. Squats. Catherine’s ‘spinal roll-downs,’ which I’m fairly certain are a form of medieval torture. Rihanna would be muttering under her breath the entire time—”
“Because I hated it,” Rihanna confirmed. “I hated every single second. I hate lunges. I hate squats. I hate that little thing Catherine does where she tilts her head and says, ‘Engage your core, darling.’ My core was engaged, Catherine. My core was engaged in a battle for its very survival.”
“And the music,” Gaga added, shuddering. “She wouldn’t let us play anything upbeat. She said it ‘encouraged sloppy movement.’ So we did all of this in silence. Just the sound of our own suffering and Catherine’s Welsh counting.”
“Un, dau, tri,” Catherine murmured, a nostalgic smile playing at her lips. “Pedwar, pump, chwech. It has a rhythm to it. A discipline.”
“It has a menace to it,” Rihanna corrected. “I started hearing it in my sleep. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, convinced Catherine was standing over my bed, making me do plank holds.”
There was a brief, charged silence. The three women exchanged glances—the kind of glances that spoke of shared trauma, of bonds forged in the fire of mutual misery. Outside, a magpie cawed. Somewhere in the distance, a lawnmower sputtered to life.
And then, as if on cue, the conversation turned.
“But you know,” Gaga said slowly, “the exercises weren’t even the worst part.”
“No,” Rihanna agreed, her voice darkening. “No, they were not.”
“Not by a long shot,” Catherine added, her perfectly sculpted jaw tightening.
The interviewer leaned forward. “What was the worst part?”
The three women looked at each other. Then, in unison, they spoke a single word:
“The donuts.“
Catherine’s Ceiling Catastrophe
Catherine’s ordeal began on a sweltering summer afternoon. “I was hosting a small gathering for some absolutely vital people—my acupuncturist, my astrologer, and a very nice man who cleans my crystals. We were having infused water on the verandah, admiring the magnificent jacaranda tree, when I heard it.” She closes her eyes. “A drip. Then a trickle. Then a torrent. I walked inside to find my grand piano—my beloved Steinway—being baptised by a waterfall cascading from the chandelier.”
The source of the deluge was a burst pipe in the attic, a casualty of the ancient copper plumbing that had been installed when Federation was still a gleam in the architects’ eyes. “The plumber—a magnificent, cynical man named Bruce—arrived, climbed into the roof cavity, and emerged covered in what I can only describe as ‘historical sludge.’ He held up a piece of corroded pipe and said, ‘The cockatoos, love. They’ve been pecking at the roof flashing for years. Water gets in, rust sets in, and then boom. Your piano’s having a bath.'”
Rihanna’s Basement Baptism
Rihanna, lounging with the effortless authority of a woman who has conquered music, fashion, and beauty, lets out a bark of laughter. “Catherine’s story is tragic. Mine was a disaster movie.” She describes the night a record-breaking rainstorm turned Killara’s leafy streets into rivers. “I have a basement. It’s where I keep my archives—my original lyric notebooks, my stage costumes, my first Grammy. You know, things that are irreplaceable.”
She leans forward. “At 2 AM, I woke to the sound of water sloshing. I ran downstairs and found my entire basement submerged. My notebooks were floating. My costumes were absorbing moisture like sponges. I stood there, ankle-deep in water, holding my first Grammy above my head like a survivor clinging to a life raft. The plumber—a man named Dazza who looked like he’d seen everything—arrived at dawn and said, ‘The stormwater drain’s blocked, love. King parrots. They’ve been stuffing the gutters with seeds and leaves for months. It’s their larder. You’ve got a parrot pantry in your pipes.'”
Gaga’s Gutter Grotesquerie
Lady Gaga, wearing a magnificent headpiece that bears a disturbing resemblance to a plumbing snake, speaks with theatrical reverence. “Mine was not merely plumbing. It was a manifestation.” She describes the evening she was meditating on her balcony, attempting to channel creative energy for her upcoming tour. “I heard a sound from the gutter. A scratching. A scraping. A scrabbling. I opened my eyes to find an entire family of cockatoos dismantling my gutters, piece by piece, right in front of me.”
She pauses for effect. “I screamed. They screamed back—louder. It was a scream-off. I lost. They had more lung capacity. The plumber—a deeply spiritual man named Kev—arrived and said, ‘The rosellas, miss. They’ve been dropping twigs and bottle caps into your downpipes. It’s a game. They like the echo. They’re making music.’ I asked him what key they were playing in. He said, ‘The key of chaos, love. The key of chaos.'”
The Feathered Felons of Killara
One third of this nightmare can be laid squarely at the feet—or talons—of the avian population of Killara. The parrots of the Upper North Shore are not mere birds. They are an organised syndicate with a sophisticated hierarchy, a taste for destruction, and an unnerving intelligence that borders on the malevolent.
“The cockatoos are the generals,” Catherine declares, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “They don’t just destroy things. They orchestrate. I watched one land on my neighbour’s satellite dish and carefully, methodically, snap each of the support arms. Another one acted as lookout. They were communicating. I could see it in their eyes. They had a plan.”
Rihanna nods vehemently. “The sulphur-crested ones are the worst. They have that crest like a crown, and they think they’re the rulers of Killara. One of them figured out how to open my outdoor tap by pecking the handle. I came home to find my entire garden waterlogged. The plumber said, ‘They like the sound of running water. It calms them. You’ve been providing parrot ASMR.'”
But it was the king parrot and the rosella that Gaga found most disturbing. “The king parrot is beautiful—so beautiful it makes you forget it’s a predator. But it has a specific obsession with rubber. Specifically, the rubber washers in outdoor taps. I went through nine washers in three months. My water bill was criminal. The plumber said, ‘They love the taste. It’s like candy to them.’ And the rosella—the little blue-cheeked one—it’s the infiltrator. It watches you. It learns your habits. It knows when you’re on holiday, and that’s when it strikes.”
The Sisterhood of the Soggy
The three women formed a WhatsApp group they called “The Killara Survivors Society.” They shared photos of feathery perpetrators, swapped plumber recommendations, and provided emotional support during the darkest moments.
“We learned the hierarchy,” says Rihanna, now an unwilling expert in ornithological criminality. “Cockatoo does demolition. King parrot does surgical sabotage of rubber. Rosella does reconnaissance and psychological warfare. It’s a three-tiered operation. They’re better organised than some record labels I’ve worked with.”
Their collective breaking point occurred on a single, catastrophic Friday. Catherine’s piano was flooded again. Rihanna’s basement became a swimming pool once more. Gaga’s entire gutter system was dismantled and scattered across her lawn like a postmodern sculpture.
“We all called the same emergency plumber,” Catherine recalls, shuddering. “He arrived with three vans and a face that said, ‘I told you so.’ He fixed us all, one by one. And as he drove away, a cockatoo landed on his roof rack and just stared at him. He didn’t even try to shoo it away. He knew it was pointless. The birds had won.”
The Final Verdict
Rihanna grins, shaking her head. “Killara taught me that you can have everything—fame, fortune, a Grammy collection—but you cannot defeat a king parrot with a rubber addiction. Would I do it again? For those views of the Blue Mountains?” She pauses. “Hell yes. I’d just install a moat. And hire a bird psychologist.”
Gaga raises her champagne glass—which, for reasons unknown, is wrapped in copper wire. “Killara was a crucible. It destroyed me and rebuilt me. I emerged stronger, wiser, and terrified of ornithological sabotage.”
Catherine raises her glass high, her voice ringing with defiance. “To Killara! The suburb that tried to kill me, and failed! I am against killing, generally speaking, but Killara?” She grins. “I’m strongly in favour of never going back!”