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#AceNewsRoom With ‘Kindness & Wisdom’ July.11, 2022 @acehistorynews

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#AceHistoryDesk – Farming has been in the Geldard family for four generations, but one plant almost brought them to their knees early on: Prickly pear is considered one of the greatest biological invasions of modern times, infesting millions of hectares of rural land in Australia a century ago and rendering it virtually useless and worthless.

Chinchilla farmer Ashley Geldard said the story of his great grandfather Ernest Geldard’s battle against the invasive pest is written in family folklore.

“He just walked off the property because the pear was so dense. It basically beat him,” Mr Geldard said.

Changing fortunes

Ernest Geldard started farming in 1909 after moving to Queensland’s Western Downs from Armidale in New South Wales where his family had a music store.

“He was a little late on the scene and the only country left was some very heavily timbered brigalow country, which at that time nobody wanted because it was so much work to open up,” Mr Geldard said.

“It didn’t grow much at all, it was too dense.”

Ernest toiled the land for 11 years, but he was not fast enough for the prickly pear and retreated to Armidale again in 1920.

Mr Geldard said his great grandfather returned to Chinchilla five years later to find the cattle he had abandoned were in pretty good shape, having survived on the prickly pear.

Ernest sold them for a decent price and kicked off his dairy farm again.

“We had bottles with ‘prickly pear poison’ written on it. They tried to poison it, which was a failure,” he said.

“We had burners. There was an old horse-drawn burner that sat against the fence for a lot of years.

“When the cactoblastis came in the early ’30s that then was revolutionary in the way that they opened it up.”

‘Green plague’

When the ABC broadcast its first program 90 years ago in 1932, Australia’s “green plague” had already officially been conquered.

It was all thanks to one insect from South America – the Cactoblastis cactorum moth.

Billions of eggs were released in the mid-1920s and within a few years the biological pest control was hailed a major success in destroying the plant and revitalising stagnant townships.

According to the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, such was the success of the cactoblastis it even became a star of the big screen in the black and white film The Conquest of the Prickly Pear.

The first recorded introduction of prickly pear was attributed to Governor Phillip at Port Jackson in 1788 to create a cochineal industry for the new colony.

The cochineal bug was used to make the red dye for British soldiers’ uniforms and they loved to feed on prickly pear.

“Red had been the colour of most British Army uniforms for hundreds of years. One of the main reasons was that red dye was cheap,” said Dr Robyn McFadyen, the chair of Biosecurity Queensland’s Invasive Plants and Animals Ministerial Advisory Council.

By the 1920s, millions of hectares of rural land were infested with prickly pear.

“They were subsequently spread around the place because they made excellent hedges that people and animals wouldn’t come through,” Dr McFadyen said.

“They made, to some extent, drought fodder if you scorched the spines off.

“So they were seen as thoroughly desirable. But of course they unfortunately saw Australia as fairly desirable too. They thrived in our climate and our soils and they spread.”

Early control measures failed to combat the hardy cactus, and in 1901 the Crown offered a 5,000 pound reward for the discovery of an effective control method, even doubling it to 10,000 pounds in 1907.

But it was never collected.

It was not until the introduction of the cactoblastis moth from South America that fortunes turned.

“They were let loose in 1924. This was everything they ever wanted — masses and masses of cactus to eat. They really got stuck into it and there were millions and millions of moths,” Dr McFadyen said.

By 1932 the moth had caused the general collapse and destruction of most of the original, thick stands of prickly pear, and almost 7 million hectares of previously infested land was made available to settlers.

Towns come back to life

Townships like Chinchilla sprang back to life after the prickly pear was defeated.

The town even has a special section of its museum dedicated to it.

“This is where the bug farm was, where all the experimental work took place to develop the eradication of the pear. The eggs were distributed from here,” said Cath Brandon, president of the Chinchilla Museum.

The locals even named a hall after the cactoblastis moth.

“The committee was formed to build the hall down at Boonarga. A meeting was held and they were going to name the hall after Phar Lap the horse,” Ms Brandon said.

“But someone said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, we’ll name it after the cactoblastis’. That’s how it came to be the Boonarga Cactoblastis Hall.”

Farming legacy

After overcoming brigalow country and the prickly pear infestation, Ernest Geldard’s legacy lives on through his great grandson Ashley.

The era of draught horses has made way for modern machinery, but some reminders remain on the family farm, like an old two furrow horse-drawn plough.

And what was once a dairy is now producing cotton and grain.

“It’s amazing looking at how that land use has changed,” Mr Geldard said.

“It’s a very different landscape to the way we are currently farming.”

ABC (HISTORY) NEWS

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