Mosquitoes in plague-like proportions are causing the air to hum around farms in flood-devastated New South Wales.
On a property 60 kilometres west of Tottenham in the Central West, one family has shared a video of clouds of the insects on their verandah.
Farmer and wool classer Nicole Fragar, 26, said she was shocked to see the infestation around the farmhouse.
"We get pretty used to plagues of bugs after storms and then we looked closer and we looked closer and we saw they were actually mosquitoes — it was crazy," she said.
"They are so thick you can barely see across the verandah."
The family has been isolated by floodwaters for almost two months.
Ma Fragar's father Jeff Fragar said he had never seen mosquitoes in numbers like this in his 30 years in the region.
"If you walk outside at dusk, the air is humming," he said.
"I was wearing a cap, it literally bit me through the cap, through my hair and I could feel it in my skull — they are monstrous."
Ms Fragar said each morning the family used a pressure cleaner to remove the dead insect bodies from the verandah.
"They die up against the window, on the floor and strip the wood coating off the verandah," she said.
Concerns for animal welfare
The family is most concerned about the impact of the insects on their livestock.
"The hard part is the animals — neighbours are telling us they are all worried about the animals attacking their cattle," Mr Fragar said.
"Cows are renowned for hiding their calves when they are born, stashing them away, and if you don't get … some sort of spray or something on them, by the following day they will be that lethargic because [the mosquitoes] will have sucked them dry.
"Even the chooks — they are giving them heaps, and the dogs.
"We were talking to a vet the other day and they shared concerns some farm dogs in the region had been killed by the mosquitoes."
Supplies of insect repellent are increasingly hard to access – and are costly – for the isolated farmers.
Infestations to continue for months
Mosquito expert Cameron Webb from the University of Sydney said the incredible number of flying insects in the video reflected what was happening in many flood-impacted regions.
"It certainly feels plague-like if I was living in a house with that many mosquitoes around it," he said.
"Clearly some of them are attracted to the light, but these big numbers are something we expect to see after the floodwaters and one of the reasons why we ask people to do their best to avoid mosquito bites."
Dr Webb led a group of health professionals who met in Dubbo several weeks ago to discuss the management of mosquito populations.
He said the insects could transmit pathogens such as the Ross River virus and the potentially deadly Japanese encephalitis virus.
Dr Webb urged people to take precautions to prevent bites and said the infestations were likely to continue for weeks or months.
"When those floodwaters recede down, the stagnant pools — that's when mosquitoes will really thrive, unfortunately," he said.
"That's going to leave conditions very favourable for mosquitoes for a long time to come."
He said the state's mosquito surveillance program was recording elevated numbers, but there were no detections of viruses at this stage.
