I'm just going to say it: I don't like moths. It is the official position of Topics that moths - like flies and mosquitos - exist solely to keep Big Bug Spray in business, and they thoroughly creep me out.
I don't like their colour, their weird bodies that seem to be absent of all structural integrity, or the way they fly into the toilet bowl and then float there for eternity no matter how many times you try to bury them at sea. I don't like the way they bounce off the light shade, and how they leave that dusty stuff on the walls when you shoo them, or the way that they pile up in inconvenient places having apparently dashed their tiny brains out trying to fly directly into the light.
Moths are, in short, terrible and you may quote me on that.
They say that children are born with an innate fear of spiders. If that's true, then surely the rule can be extended to other species and similarly primal feelings. It goes like this: Fear spiders. Crave coffee. Love sleep. Hate moths.
Here's how bad moths are: they're eaten by bats. Bats! The least cuddly creature on earth and even they want to kill them all.
Moths - and I cannot stress this enough - need to go.
Imagine my absolute seething disdain to find, then, after returning home from a couple of days out of town that we have apparently been overrun by moths.
It was further proof, if ever any were needed, that without Topics on careful watch, the whole place goes to pot. (Were there any moths before we left? Absolutely not. Would they have so brazenly tried their annual migration if we had not left? They wouldn't have dared.)
But, here we are. Back on guard and yet seemingly swimming in them. There was a scattering of bodies outside the elevator as I returned home, and an unusual amount of activity about the place over the weekend.
"Hear me out," wrote one of the highly respected and serious news reporters around here, who messaged in between rides in a monster truck. "Something is going on with the moths. They're taking over. I need you to find out why."
Another said we could quote them, but then used a word that starts with F, rhymes with "ducked", and would probably get me sent to the naughty corner if I tried to publish it, so I'll paraphrase instead: Topics, on this as in all opinions, is right and the moths are weird.
And thus it was that, with that iron-clad endorsement, I was left to investigate. Topics - ever relied upon for getting to the bottom of the real news - is here to help.
They're called Bogong moths and, though it might be hard to believe as you bat them out of the way to try to walk down the street, there aren't nearly as many of them around as there used to be.
Bogongs crawl out of the soil in the Darling River Plains of Queensland, and parts of NSW and Western Victoria each, spring only to fly upwards of 1000 kilometres towards the Australian Alps around Kosciusko and Snowy River country where they go into a dormant state like hibernation through the summer months.
It's part of an annual round trip that sees the flying critters return to the lowlands during the cooler months to breed before the whole cycle starts again around September.
There's a famous, if discreetly remembered, yarn of a former Newcastle Herald sports journo John Gilmour inhaling a Bogong while calling the trots at Broadmeadow some years back, prompting a storied fit of spasms.
Around this time of year in 2007, too, St Francis Xavier's College at Hamilton was famously overrun by Bogongs clinging to the walls and leaving behind a dusty mess.
So many were the swarms that numbers could be said to go fluttering around the plague end of the counter in the first few weeks of spring, with one notable migration in 1988 when swarms of moths blocked out the windows of the new Parliament House building in Canberra in an apocalyptic scene only slightly less viscerally upsetting than sitting through an entire High School Musical movie.
And even before that, the moths appear in First Nations lore dating back more than 2000 years when the species was so plentiful that their migration to the high country was occasion for ceremonies and trade.
Numbers have been on the decline in recent generations, though, and plummeted dramatically during the harsh drought years of 2018 and 2019 that devastated the bugs' food supply. It stands to reason, then, that our recent spate of prolonged wet weather during La Nina could have led to this year's comparatively swollen numbers - but that's just Topics' crack theory.
Now, were Topics of a vindictive spirit, we might mourn this apparent drought-induced mothpocalypse in the same way that we might mourn the extinction of mozzies or HECS debt. But, while thoroughly creepy, Bogongs are an important part of the diet of the critically endangered Mountain Pygmy-Possum. And Topics is even more strongly pro-possum than anti-moth.
Pygmy possums are, as far as this column is concerned, the most adorable possum. They're even better than Quokkas if purely because they made being mindful and demure cool long before TikTok did, and have managed to refrain from clogging up my feed with their inanely smiling and extremely-online lives. That's right Quokkas, I said it. You're basically a hashtag with fur and you look like a chicken nugget that hasn't been deep fried yet.
There are fewer than 2000 pygmy possums in the wild, according to one estimate, and the loss of their (also endangered) spring food source has put the tiny floofs at even greater threat. The possums wake up from their dormant season around the same time that the moths are flying towards theirs, but dwindling moth numbers mean the possums are going hungry with a cute factor rivalling that of a coal-dusted Victorian-era urchin earnestly begging for some more porridge.
The moths' annual migration typically lasts a few weeks and, unfortunately, there's not much that can be done to avoid the inconvenience and the mess except to wait it out.
To borrow a phrase, while the moths are undeniably a nuisance, it's best to close the fly screen tightly, lie back and think of the possums.
About Topics:
- Topics is the Newcastle Herald's daily humour column exploring stories that shape the unique cultural identity of Newcastle, its suburbs, and the Hunter region. Simon McCarthy is a Herald journalist and feature writer covering culture, local news, and community issues in the region since 2017. He has been the Topics correspondent since 2023. Contact the writer via email. To read more from Topics, visit the Herald's opinion section.
