Lorne residents' invention solution to town's marauding cockatoos

Some locals say the cockatoos are stunning and have a lot of character, but their patience with the birds is wearing thin. (ABC News: Jonathon Kendall)

Residents of Lorne, on Victoria's scenic Great Ocean Road, have been locked in a battle of wits for years now.

They've been fighting skirmishes with a large flock of increasingly intelligent sulphur-crested cockatoos that love lifting the lids of the town's wheelie bins and spreading rubbish on the ground.

"When holiday-makers and Airbnbs, etc, leave on a Sunday, they put the bin out, overfill it, and the cockies just throw rubbish all over the road," says Allan Walls from the Lorne and District Men's Shed.

The birds have grown so dexterous that they can now lift the lids on bins that aren't overfilled, and they have shared that knowledge with other birds in their flock.

"It's terrible. Every Monday morning, all of the streets are just riddled with refuse and rubbish all over the road," says fellow men's shed member Bob Sinclair.

But Mr Walls, who has been working on the problem with co-inventor Gary Fenton for more than five years, always believed there had to be a solution.

Backyard solutions include a piece of wood screwed underneath the lid to weigh it down, water bottles tied to the lid, and an assortment of bricks and rocks that the cockatoos have learnt to dislodge.

There have also been plastic bin locks and springs supplied by the local council and fitted to wheelie bins.

"What began as a simple idea became a complex and demanding project," Mr Walls, a retired caravan park broker, explains.

"It required hundreds of hours of research, numerous setbacks, and persistence from a dedicated group of volunteers."

The inventors trialled rubber strips screwed onto the bin lid to prevent the birds from flicking the lid open with their beaks.

The cockies chewed through the rubber and managed to get the lid to open, but the team knew they were onto something.

"I thought, 'What if we created something the cockies couldn't grip, a kind of apron attached to the lid?'" Mr Walls says.

Made from recycled plastic at Horsham in Victoria's Wimmera region, the frames are screwed or pop-riveted to the wheelie bin lid to thwart entry.

Allan Walls lifts his invention onto a bin prototype. (ABC News: Jonathon Kendall)

The recycled plastic apron sits under the lid of the wheelie bin. (ABC News: Jonathon Kendall)

The frames are secured to the wheelie bin. (ABC News: Jonathon Kendall)

Surf Coast Shire has installed 500 of the aprons on bins in Lorne. (ABC News: Jonathon Kendall)

"The theory is you can't lif