Don't misunderstand me. Western Australia has some spectacular scenery. Virtually everyone we met there was kind and warm-hearted. Perth is a clean, safe and vibrant city. The geology is fascinating. They make good wine. You can wear shorts year-round. It would practically be paradise except for one thing: Western Australia is home to the deadliest animal in the world.
I'm not talking about saltwater crocodiles or any of their many, many, many venomous snakes, of which they have many, by the way. I am talking, of course about the Fly.
The local wildlife accompany us everywhere in WA
The various varieties of Western Australian Fly do not usually bite, but they are a formidable foe nonetheless. They hate all of us humans and they aren't going to stop until they have the red soil of Western Australia all to themselves again.
They know they can't fight us directly with force, but they have numbers on their side, plus a deep well of patience and a willingness to sacrifice their individual selves for the greater goal. Their strategy is one of simple genius: harass us until we go away. Theirs is a war of attrition.
They have learned over generations that we use our hands to do things, but that we generally can't move them fast enough to be any real threat to them. Thus, they will wait until one, or even better, both hands are occupied and then go in for the attack. Their goal is the moist parts of the face: the mouth, the nose, the surface of the eyeball. All of their evolution has bred them to WANT to be in these places soooo badly.
They know that it is impossible for a motorist to drive in a straight line after a fly has landed on their upper lip and darted into a nostril, or for a hiker to see the clifftop trail when a fly is dancing around on their pupil. One insurance statistic that I just made up is that 90% of all cars insured in Western Australia are totaled within the first year. Also, only thirty percent of bush walkers ever return. It's carnage out there.
Queenslanders have a reputation for being a little 'out there', but it's the Western Australians that are truly nuts. Apologies to our friends from there, but deep down, you all know it's true. In Australia, they have what is known as “the Aussie wave”, where one's hand is waved in front of one's face to shoo away flies. In Western Australia, it is ubiquitous. You can tell when a Western Australian has fallen asleep when their arms stop moving. They do it out of habit, even in hermetically sealed environments where there are no flies.
The best defense against them is acceptance. Outsiders like us use head nets over our hats to keep them away from our faces. Eventually, one in twenty will find their way through and then the flailing starts. Those born here seem to have at least some ability to ignore them. It seems they have accepted the fact that each breath comes with a fly or two just like every ice cream cone at the beach is a little crunchy with sand.
On the Busselton Jetty, we saw a kid who wasn't quite acclimated. Busselton is a perfectly lovely town with a nice laid-back atmosphere that would be an ideal place to settle down, except for the flies. They can absolutely ruin any good outing. As soon as you step foot outside, they surround you like you were Justin Beiber and you had just walked into a junior high school.
The kid on the jetty was running in tormented spirals swinging his arms around his head and screaming in hoarse frustration. Those of us adults nearby (including his father) knew that such displays are not socially acceptable, but I guarantee that every single one of us had the same thing going on inside our heads as we tried to pretend we didn't notice the little monsters buzzing around our faces and body surfing in our eye juice. That sound you hear in the background as you walk the jetty isn't the surf, it's people falling in. The thought that kept going through my head (other than AAAAUUGGHHH!!!) was, who would want to live here?
Western Australians, that's who. They are all nuts!
On our first shore visit after leaving Western Australia (WA), on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, we also encountered flies. There were three of them. I named them Steve, Susan and Gerald (perhaps I've been in WA a little too long myself). Each of them was happy to leave us alone for the rest of the day after the first arm wave. On Kangaroo Island, at least, it seems like it would be perfectly possible to do things like eat dinner out on the patio, enjoying the sunset, while your inner voice lets out a big aaaahhhh...
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