The Australian mouse plague, a pestilence of biblical proportions, has been described by witnesses as ‘like a decaying body’. This is no mere hyperbole. It is the stench of an agricultural system in terminal decline, a rotting carcass that the nation’s farmers are forced to inhale daily. And yet, from across the sea, the ghost of Victorian husbandry offers a solution. But will Australia have the spine to embrace it?
Let us first survey the catastrophe. Millions of mice, driven by a perfect storm of mild winters and abundant grain stores, have turned the Australian outback into a writhing, squeaking carpet. They gnaw through wiring, spoil fodder, and leave a trail of disease and despair. The psychological toll on farmers is immense. Some have resorted to mass drownings, others to arson of their own fields. It is a scene that would make a Roman senator weep at the decadence of modern farming.
The cause? A single-minded obsession with monoculture and chemical warfare. For decades, Australian farmers have relied on broad-spectrum poisons to keep rodents at bay. But the mice evolve faster than the chemists can invent. The result is a super-plague, resistant to every toxin deployed. It is the law of unintended consequences, written in fur and faeces.
Enter the British, who in their own Victorian era faced analogous horrors. The great plagues of rats in London’s slums were not solved by poison but by a return to integrated pest management: hygiene, biological controls, and structural reforms. The UK’s modern approach to rodent control is a marvel of subtlety. It involves monitoring, targeted baiting with novel compounds that poison only mice, and the encouragement of natural predators. Foxes, owls, and even the humble domestic cat are enlisted as foot soldiers in a quieter war. But the keystone is prevention: better grain storage, sealed buildings, and field rotation that destroys the rodents’ breeding cycles.
Why then does Australia persist with the old ways? The answer lies in intellectual decadence. There is a stubborn pride in the ‘Aussie battler’ narrative, a refusal to learn from foreign examples. This is a form of nationalistic blindness. The same syndrome which leads Australians to deny climate science or mock European farming regulations now leaves them defenceless against a plague of mice. They would rather drown in a sea of rodentia than admit that Victorian pragmatism, coupled with scientific method, offers a lifeline.
But the clock is ticking. The mouse population, predicted to peak this autumn, could cause billions in damage. More critically, it carries diseases which threaten human health. Leptospirosis, salmonella, and hantavirus are not abstract threats. They are agents of a potential public health crisis that will make COVID look like a mild flu. The decaying body metaphor is not just olfactory. It may soon be literal.
What must be done? First, swallowing pride. Australian policymakers should fly to the UK and study the protocols of the Rural Payments Agency and the National Wildlife Management Centre. They must invest in research for species-specific contraceptives and for biotechnologies that can neuter male rodents. They should incentivise farmers to restore hedgerows and owl boxes, creating a natural defence force. And they must admit that the chemical treadmill is a dead end.
Of course, this will be expensive. But the cost of doing nothing is incalculable. If Australia continues on its current path, the plague will become an annual cycle, like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, but with more excrement. It is a choice between a Victorian solution and a return to barbarism.
In conclusion, the mouse plague is a mirror held up to the soul of Australian agriculture. It reflects a system that is proud, short-sighted, and resistant to change. But it also offers a chance for rebirth. By embracing the lessons of a bygone empire, Australia can transform this stinking field of death into a model of sustainable practice. Or it can continue to decay. The choice is not merely economic. It is existential.
