Sandflies.. A. ungulatum species, is concentrated on the West Coast.

About this image

Description SCROLL DOWN TO "EXTERNAL LINK" TO READ MORE.
In 1892, the Minister of Public Works—Richard John Seddon, who would later become Premier—decided to smear himself with camphorated lard, which he claimed worked well.

South Island lighthouse keepers painted their doors with kerosene, and some recommended that settlers swallow spoonfuls of the combustible liquid so that the oil could ooze from their pores and thus repel the biters.

Fiordland pioneer Richard Henry, whose camp was infested with sandflies “in such numbers that they could bleed a man to death in a few hours if he had a large surface exposed and neglected them”, designed a clever contraption he called his “sandfly miraculum”. Henry smeared fat on a warm chimney, trapping thousands of the little beasts, which then slid down to be duly eaten by weka.

“The most common of these scourges, Austrosimulium australense, is widely distributed throughout New Zealand,” Craig explained. “The second, A. tillyardianum, is found from south of Auckland to just north of Dunedin, and a third,” my nemesis A. ungulatum, “is restricted to the South Island, where it’s concentrated on the West Coast.”Map^[1]External LinkNZ national Geographic.. SandfliesContributorHeather Newby

Shown in this image

Location (city or town)West CoastPersonRichard John SeddonEventSandflies

OCR Text Transcription Edit Edit +-Close

Editing is temporarily disabled

Cancel Edit

Start typing here to find a location	Latitude	Longitude	Zoom	Actions

loading google map....

Save Cancel

Menu

Sandflies.. A. ungulatum species, is concentrated on the West Coast.

Editing is temporarily disabled