Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to farm on a small scale; usu. cockatooing n.

1864		Sth. Aus. Register (Adelaide) 22 Aug. 3/3: I guarantee it will pay better than mining, cockatooing, or any other investment.
1875		Aus. Town and Country Journal (Sydney) 4 Sept. 888/2: A farm! Fancy three hundred acres in Oxfordshire, with a score or two of bullocks, and twice as many black-faced Down sheep. Regular cockatooing [AND].
1880		‘Erro’ Squattermania 296: The cockatooing has been a failure so far [...] and both of us are getting short of cash.
1884		Sth. Aus. Register (Adelaide) 19 June 7/5: Instead of cockatooing the land [...] they gave up the idea of growing wheat.
1892		Truth (Sydney) 17 Apr. 1/4: And I know in Asia Minor, where old Adam used to farm, No cockatooing party ever worked the squatter harm [AND].
1901		Nth. Qld Register (Townsville, Qld) 12 Feb. 3/4: They could have [...] gone cockatooing, or done any other work,. which promised a comfortable living.
1909		E. Waltham Life and Labour in Aus. 30: Ararat was doomed to fall back for its existence upon the precarious conditions attached to ‘cockatooing’.
1912		Sun. Times (Perth) 29 Sept. 1s/4: Prospector Ford, of Bayley and Ford, is cockatooing over East.

2. (Aus.) to sit on a fence, talking, watching the world go by.

1890		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Colonial Reformer II 110: The correct thing, on first arriving at a drafting yard, is to ‘cockatoo,’ or sit on the rails, high above the tossing horn-billows, and discuss the never-ending subject of hoof and horn.
1893		E. Favenc Last of Six 127: His mane and tail had been pulled, and to-day a saddle had been girthed on him —all these indignities he justly attributed to the man ‘cockatooing’ on the fence.

3. to keep a lookout.

1935		Canberra Times 28 May 3/3: The licensee had been ‘cockatooing’ [i.e. looking out for police] at the door.
1938		Sydney Morn. Herald 14 Apr. 6/4: he was standing in Oxford Street when Constable Shirlaw accused him of ‘cockatooing’ for the barrows.
1949		L. Glassop Lucky Palmer 99: If it isn’t my old mate, ‘Darky’ Sneddon, who used to keep nit for Clarrie Simpson at Bindarra [...] Still cockatooing, eh, ‘Darky’?
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 232/1: to cockatoo – to act as a lookout man.
1974		Warrumbungle Bk of Verse (1978) 20: The fettler’s son is keeping nit / By a knot hole in the wall / Cockatooing just in case, / The Coppers pay a call [AND].
1982		in Lowenstein & Hills Under Hook 16: I used to cockatoo for them – watch for the police.