House mice plagues a regular threat in 20th Century for the rural grain-growing areas of South Australia
A large mound of dead mice trapped and killed near wheat stacks during the plague that hit Crystal Brook, in South Australia's mid north, during 1917. A catch over three nights netted 126,400 mice with a combined weight of two tons.
Image by J.B. Cleland, courtesy State Library of South Australia
Plagues of the introduced house mice – as distinct from native rodents or marsupial mice – had broken out or threatened in South Australian grain-growing regions around every four years from the 20th Century.
One of the earliest plagues recorded was in 1872 near Saddlesworth, with farmers ploughing the soil to destroy mice nests. The mid north, around Oladdie, Mundoora and Georgetown, was hit by a plague in 1890.
Parts of South Australia, including Crystal Brook and Balaklava, suffered from one of the largest Australia-wide plagues in 1917, stretching from Queensland to Western Australia. The Advertiser in Adelaide in June 1917 reported on the Crystal Brook mice invasion with “Mr F.G. England … conducting operations under the Harvest Board. (He) began work on the local (wheat) stacks on Wednesday with his double-fence trap. On the first night of operations with only part of the stack fenced, Mr England succeeded in bagging 15,400 (mice), and this morning, with the stack fenced all round, 60,000 were caught”. The two catches weighed a ton and a quarter.
Plagues of mice have been occurring since with increasing frequency. Loxton (1931) and Eyre Peninsula (1956) have been problem areas but other parts of the state were affected in 1994 and 2011.
The federal government agency, commonwealth scientific and industrial research organisation (CSIRO) conducted national monitoring for mice outbreaks. The Pest Smart website has information on mouse activity across Australia. Poison baiting of mice with registered products was allowed by farmers who also have mouse bait mixing stations allowing them to have poison bits mixed into their own grain.
