karenm

Hi,
This may seem like a silly question !! Is Perth overrun with flies ?!! We have just had our visa granted and hope to emigrate to Perth in the summer. I have just read that Perth has a slight problem with flies and am a tad concerned, not being a hugh fan of the little blighters !! :scared: Can anyone put my mind at rest ??

Karen x

Amazulu

They were pretty bad in November & December but not so bad now. I'm not sure what the reason is for that. Apparently, according to the locals (not always the best source), it's been a particularly bad summer for flies & is not normally that bad.

Bella Donna

I hate them too and was dreading the summer. But it hasn't been anywhere near as bad as I expected. Dh wouldn't agree - he comes home from walking the dog with them all over his back - they hitch a ride! Eating outside isn't a lot of fun so we don't tend to do it, but all in all, nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. The ones that try very hard to get in your eyes, nose and ears p*ss me off a bit - they seem to follow you round. We're certainly seeing them dropping back now - walking dd to school the past week has been a pleasure but it was awful back in December. The nights are definitely getting colder and whether this is helping I don't know. Living in a windy area also helps I think - blows them inland!

renth

Perth used to be REALLY bad for flies back in the day. What they did in the 70s or 80s was introduce dung beetles in to the WA bush to bury all the cowshit.

There is a lag of about 1 month after it gets hot between the fly activity and the dung beetle activity. So on the first warm easterley of the summer the flies all get blown in and they seem to appear overnight in plague like proportions.

This goes on for a month or so, then the dung beetles in the bush hatch, bury all the sh*t and the number of bush flies in Perth drops dramatically.

You still get the horrible greenbottles, the blow flies from people not looking after their bins properly. These are the ones I hate because when you spray them they proceed to spray living maggots everywhere as they die. Nice :scared:

eljustino

yuk thats minging!!! :scared:

Neil S

Nowhere near as bad as November/December here either. In fact the Dung Beetles must have done a really good job, cos there's hardly any left at all.

Amazulu

Weird isn't it. It's almost as if they disappeared overnight. Good move with the dung beetles I reckon!

julesandco

Hi,

there have been days when the flies have been REALLY bad. We went to Busselton for a day and they were terrible there. It was pretty much as Renth explained - they'd had a lot of rain therefore the grass was longer, therefore the cows were eating more, therefore they were producing more poo, therefore more for the flies to enjoy!

Quite a sobering thought after a stressful picnic where more time was spent flapping our arms around wildly like idiots, rather than eating and drinking.

The afternoon sea breeze helps - blows them all back in-land!! I don't think you get used to flies - just buy an insectocutor type thing and retreat indoors when they are really bad! Alternatively, you can buy fly swatters in the shape of Oz!

Enjoy, J

perthgirl

I hardly notice them any more I think the longer you live here the less you notice the annoying things about Perth finally I must be truly Australian

jensteve

The flies this year have been bad, something to do with the government have not given the usual grant to the farmers so this year the spraying hasn't been done, one of my customers was trying to explain it to me!
She mentioned dung beetles and said it was something to do with them and each year a grant is available but this year it wasn't so we all have flies, bloody hundreds!
Jenny

julesandco

Hi JenSteve - just wanted to say that your avatar scares me!

Good night!

Zebra4

What flies? The last time I noticed them was in Scotland and England.

goldcoastblue

Nah,

that was the freeloading social parasites,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


nothing beats them, for annoying liitle scroats