Smothered in long, sharp spines, the Hudson pear is a snowballing horror for our wildlife and livestock.
There are lots of reasons to visit Lightning Ridge. There are the outback sunsets, the stars, the hot springs, and the locals, including the kind and gentle woman behind the front desk of my motel who calls me “darl” like she actually means it and would, I am sure, have come out and helped me change the tyre on my car, had I asked her. There is also, of course, the opal.
Savage bends down, picks up a stick and knocks off a small section, or cladode, which falls to the ground, bouncing, almost daintily, on its spines. “The pieces come off so easily,” he says. “You only need a bit half the size of your thumb to get on the ground and it’ll send down roots.” Its transmissibility is almost viral. Rivers can sweep it downstream. A kangaroo might go for days with a piece of it in its fur.
There are plenty of Hudson pear horror stories – of people yanking the spines out with pliers; of falling face-first and getting the spines in their eyes. But the story I like best involves Jeff Ainsworth, one-time miner and full-time recluse who lives four kilometres from town. Sometime between 2005 and 2010 , Ainsworth was walking around his property when he stumbled backwards into a patch of the cactus. He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and thongs.
Or that’s the idea. Unfortunately, 2021 and 2022 brought unseasonably heavy rains, which washed the cochineal off the plants. Savage set about furiously breeding more bugs, but the cactus had by then become a political issue, with local candidates using it to criticise the incumbent LNP government. In late 2022, in the lead-up to the state election, the local member, the Nationals’ Dugald Saunders, announced a $2.6 million Hudson Pear Control Program.
I mention the cochineal, but Slack-Smith shakes his head. He’s not a huge fan of the bug, or of Mat Savage, for that matter. “This was one of the first release sites. Five years the bug’s been here, and look at it now! It’s overrun!” But what about all the rain, I say. Wouldn’t it have washed the bug off? “Yeah, okay, but we can’t rely on a drought to make it work. As soon as we see a good season, the cactus will come back again.
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