EVER since biblical times, and no doubt before that, the human race has been beset by plagues.
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The dictionary defines it as "a widespread affliction, a sudden influx or injurious outbreak".
While the Oral History group members may not have been subjected to many widespread afflictions, they certainly came up with a surprising number of memories of discomforting, and sometimes financially damaging, swarms of creepies and crawlies, occasionally in plague proportions.
The influx which caused the most emotional recollections were mice.
According to the CSIRO, it is only in the southern and eastern grain belts of Australia and in a remote plateau in northwest China, that mouse plagues occur frequently and for long durations.
Many of our group who had lived in these areas agreed wholeheartedly.
Kerrel Moor was newly married and living a long way out of Warialda when she experienced mice in great numbers for the first time.
"It was 1962 and they came in their hundreds, eating all my recipe books and papers. I couldn't stand them."
I could only agree, having lived in Gilgandra in the early 1970s where the mice invaded every cupboard, drawer and receptacle. They ate through Tupperware containers and even climbed into our beds at night.
The roads were awash with live and dead mice and it all lasted for three months. The town stores ran out of mousetraps and the cat couldn't stand the sight of them.
Jeff Morrow remembered new green shoots of the grain crop being thoroughly demolished by the starving predators.
Everyone developed novel methods of catching them. Leslye Melville, who lived in Condobolin said her sons became very adept at trapping.
One popular method involved smearing oil on the neck of a bottle and standing it in a bucket of water, attracting the mice who then slipped into the water and drowned.
Elma Wolf spoke of a plague she experienced in 1958 when, to her horror, she found dead mice under the pillows of her infant twin boys.
Flea infestations were another influx which had the group literally itching to tell their stories.
Dee Alechnowicz remembers them in Sydney in the1940s and 50s.
"We lived in Maroubra where it is very sandy and one cinema was full of them and, of course, earned the name “flea pit”. Mum was always disinfecting and cleaning, trying to get rid of them from our house."
Russell Moor, who claims to have been in most plagues, recalled a "savage flea plague in the 1950s which lasted six weeks. It always started with a thunderstorm, because the noise and vibration hatches the eggs," he said.
Gillian Baxter is another who is thoroughly experienced in battling swarms of invading pests. When living in Sydney she would keep a glass of water near the bed at night in which to drown the fleas as she caught them.
“Now, living out of Orange in a house over 100 years old, we have bogong moths, Christmas beetles, pumpkin beetles, gnats and ants," she told the impressed group.
Swarms of insects in plague proportions cause damage and sometimes ruin to those on the land.
"We had spent a lot of money and time establishing lucerne pastures, “said Owen Schwilk. "We went to bed one night and saw, to our horror the next morning, that aphids had taken every leaf off the crop."
Mr Moor had a similar experience with the African spur-throated locust.
"I had a beautiful crop you could see out of the window. One morning Kerrel said: ‘the crop has changed colour overnight’.”
“Nonsense,” I replied. “But she was right. The locusts had gone through and completely destroyed it."
Mrs Moor, who also seems to have experience in quite a few plagues, spoke feelingly of a house she lived in as a child which was taken over by Argentine ants.
“It was the bank manager's house at Mullumbimby and they invaded the kitchen. Even when a new kitchen was built they took over that too."
The talk moved on to snakes and their appearance in great numbers after floods and, as Bruce Martin pointed out, that in the cotton crops where he worked at one time. “The irrigation of the crops meant that snakes were just a way of life there.”
People whose homesteads had been inundated by flood would often find themselves sharing the house with snakes even after the floods receded.
Then there were other unpleasant creatures that invaded during wet years.
"The green blowfly," pronounced Mr Moor. “Does enormous damage to sheep in favourable conditions. When the wool is wet and the weather mild, I have seen 4000 thousand sheep flyblown in two days. Mulesing was fantastic at the time but now the wrinkles are being bred out which makes a huge difference."
"Another godsend was the evolution of jetting systems, “added Mr Morrow. “With high pressure jets straight into the wool.”
By this time oral history group members had almost exhausted both themselves and its list of plague like creatures, so with a brief mention of foxes, goats, wild pigs, brumby horses, camels and kangaroos which can all cause problems for the man on the land, we called it a day.
Next: The most damaging plague of all -rabbits.