cloudisland
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It's a fallacy that the Aussie fly plague has anything to do with the introduction of cattle by Europeans, the flies were already there. Check out http://www.viacorp.com/flybook/fulltext.html#bushflies which gives an excellent explanation of the why and wherefores of the fly plague in Australia. To start you off, I have pasted some of the info here:-
1) Why are there so many flies .... They are Bush Flies: The female bush flies pester you most. They want protein. They need it to develop their ovaries, to prepare eggs for the next generation of bush flies. They get protein from your tears, saliva, the mucus in your nose -- and from blood, if you have any fresh cuts. To be blunt, they are also hoping you might do a poo. Bush flies are programmed to stay around animals, because animal dung is their favourite place to lay eggs. Sometimes they drink sweat. It hasn't got much protein in it -- not nearly enough. But it's useful if the flies are thirsty, and it has some minerals they can use.
Male bush flies probably hang around you mostly to be near the females! They don't need much protein.
When bush flies swarm around you, there are usually about three females for every male.
The smaller the female bush fly, the more she needs extra protein to produce her eggs. The small bush flies are short of protein because they've grown from larvae that haven't been able to get enough food. This happens if there are too many larvae competing for the food, or if the food quality is poor. This is why the smallest flies are so frantic and persistent. They're desperate, protein-hungry females. They want that protein in your tears, in your nose, in your saliva. And note this: even if little flies get all the protein they want, they don't grow bigger. They can't. They have exterior skeletons and stay the same size all their lives.
So there aren't different types of bush fly. Just different sizes. Fat ones that don't bother you too much. And little ones that act like demons.
2) Where they come from:- When the first colonists came ashore in 1788, they brought ashore five cows and two bulls. The bush flies watching the scene must have felt a dawning sense of unbelievable good luck.
These days, most bush flies breed in cow dung. They breed there because there's so much cow dung, and because there's been nothing to stop the fly breeding -- or slow it down.
There are more than twenty million cattle in Australia. They each drop around 12 'pads' a day. And from each cow pad, up to 2000 flies can emerge. (Mathematical readers might like to calculate whether there are more stars in our galaxy, or more bush flies bred each year in Australian cow dung.)
Before the cows arrived in Australia, the bush flies had a harder time. They bred in animal dung, but there were snags: kangaroos and other native animals didn't produce much dung per hectare, and the dung dried out quickly because it was small. So the flies had poor breeding material, and not much of it. But then the cows came and soon there was plenty of dung. And there was nothing much to stop flies breeding in it apart from the native dung beetles, but there are more flies than even they can eat.
3) Flies in cities:- In the winter, bush flies die out in the southern part of Australia. It's too wet and cold. But they keep breeding in the warmer north and the drier inland. The population rises and falls with rainfall and temperature.
From August to November, warm winds blow from the north. (Pretty regularly, about twice a month.) These winds lift clouds of pregnant female bush flies and carry them south. The flies come south in steps, in jumps -- sometimes hundreds of km a day.
And they don't get blown back when the wind shifts to the north. The wind acts like a one-way valve: when the wind blows from the south, it's too cold for the flies to get airborne. They stay where they are. They wait for the next warm wind coming from the north.
As the flies come south, they find winter pasture covered with good-quality cow dung. The females start laying eggs, just as the air temperature is warming up fast. It's the new-bred flies from these rich breeding grounds that swarm into our southern cities.
Sydney :- Bush flies blow in from the pasture-land breeding areas on hot westerly winds. This means the bush-fly population in Sydney is erratic, because the winds are. Now you see bush flies, now you don't. There are very few bush flies until October. The waves of flies grow denser and denser during November and December. The peak comes in January. T
HOUSE FLIES: House flies came to Australia as stowaways on the early ships. It was the same way many other insects got here: the Mediterranean fruit fly, the German cockroach, flour moth, grain weevil, green vegetable bug, Argentine ant, Indian rat flea, and others. If a house fly sees a group of flies, it joins them. It will even join a group of imitation flies.
Check out the website it has all the answers you need! |
ABCDiamond Britzinoz.com
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The fly populations vary in different parts of Australia.
From what I have heard, WA seems to have more flies in residential areas than other States.
I am now in QLD, and in my specific area, we have less flies than we did when living in Sydney.
We even have less flies here, than we did when we lived in England.
But in some parts of Australia, you have to be careful when opening your mouth.... unless you like to eat flies :) |
Shelley
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Don't really understand this question as everyone has flies?
If you are somewhere that doesn't you have broken Guiness book of Records as they heat brings them out like all bugs, they like the hot weather.
You need to use a 'roll on' insect repellant to deter them as you will never get rid of them permanently.
I however, would be more worried about snakes, wasps, spiders, etc than the flies. |
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