Midges and How to Avoid Them
Rolling down the back roads of a recent coastal trip in our 4×4 HiAce, around about 4pm, we start looking for yet another idyllic camping spot to pull up for the night. But as is our style of travelling, that overnighter may well turn into multiple nights if it’s a beautiful spot.
Bingo, Sharyn locates a handful of potential places to call a temporary home via the couple of apps we use.
We’re generally good at picking a suitable spot, know what to look out for, and certainly what to avoid. We both shook our heads at the first option and spent another 10 minutes finding what we thought was an idyllic, secluded, picturesque camping spot right on the banks of a river.
We rarely get it wrong.
Not that we knew it yet, but this was to be the worst camping spot we had ever picked. I mean the nastiest, cruellest, most awful spot ever and by the end of our shortened stay, we were both ready to chew our arms and legs off, as well as dip our remaining parts into, well, anything that would dissolve our pain and distress.
WHAT WENT WRONG?
Let’s step back a little. At first sight of this campsite, I noted along the river’s opposite bank the large stand of mangroves. It was not ideal as far as mozzies go, but it was quite a wide waterway, and the gentle breeze was favourable and blowing away from the us.
Our side of the river was stepped up high from the lapping water – 10 to 15m or thereabouts, which gave me some comfort to not worry about mozzies. The wafts of smoke from our campfire blended perfectly with the sunset and provided a somewhat natural barrier to biting insects… or so I thought.
Once we’d cooked and eaten, chewed the fat over what route we may take over the coming days and sipped our last cold drink, we were soon ready to hit the sack at a decent hour.
Our camper is well-sealed via windows and insect screens, and we have a permanent bed setup that allows for quick and easy ingress. Given that we’d not been bitten around the campfire or while cooking or eating, we figured we had plenty of time to prepare ourselves for bed, flick the lights off, and enjoy another great night’s sleep in the Australian bush.
Then, just a few short hours later, we woke to the annoying sounds of flying, buzzing insects.
We started to itch and scratch.
The crazed and violent air-swatting went on and on. We endured many hours of walloping and slapping our invisible enemy targets, hiding under the sheets, which caused the hot and humid conditions to become unbearable, seeing us peep from the sheets from time to time for fresh air. They attacked our faces, up our noses, in our ears, through our hair and on our eyelids, under the sheets to devour our bodies, as well as our legs right down to the toes.
If there were ever to be a perfect campsite torture, surely being bit by insects so small that you couldn’t see them would be near the top of the list!
As an extra piece of perhaps trivial information, some reports note that various breeds of midge activities vary around the lunar cycle. Guess what? Our rotten experience was on a full moon – I kid you not! We could not have chosen a worse night to spend on this particular waterway.
THE MIDGES WON THE BATTLE
Our regular camping routine of an earlyish rise to the day’s first steaming hot cuppa was canned at the crack of dawn. With our fastest camp pack-up and departure ever, our 4×4 HiAce was soon headed to the first town with a pharmacy to help relieve our incessant itching and the emerging red sores all over our bodies.
After a dose of antihistamines, several passes of itch-soothing cream, and extra strong coffee – well, the coffee did nothing other than settle our nerves and calm our battle-scarred bodies – we soon felt a slowing of the midge-induced itching.
WHAT IS A MIDGE?
Firstly, a midge is not a sandfly but a small biting fly. Sandflies tend to be a common name for many small biting insects.
Although many types of midges are found in Australia, only a few cause a severe itch and irritation, and all that bite are females! They are small enough to be often only noticed once it’s too late and after the initial itch starts. They are from one to three millimetres in size, dark-bodied (more so as they fill with blood), with lightly coloured wings. They are also fast-moving, making them difficult to see and, therefore, to act on.
The tales and thoughts that midges urinate or deposit eggs or larvae on or under the human skin are false.
When biting, in search of a high-protein blood meal, midges inject an anticoagulant along with their saliva, which includes a type of histamine that results in the initial itch. Scratching and breaking the skin, which induces a weeping infection, prolongs the effects and increases the severity. The itch and soreness can last for days or weeks and affect different people differently.
Expect multiple bites from midges; in our case, we suffered hundreds of bites, many in clusters on our exposed skin, causing enormous itch and discomfort.
Unlike the equally annoying mosquitoes, they do not transmit diseases (in Australia).
WHAT NOT TO DO
As hard as it is, avoiding scratching your skin and breaking the surface is the first thing to prevent open sores from becoming infected and having longer-lasting side effects of midge bites.
It isn’t easy to resist the temptation, but using your knuckles or the palm of your hand instead of fingernails to provide some form of temporary relief will prevent turning an agonising itch into an agonising itch with an infected, weeping wound… yuck!
NEXT TIME
No, this terrible experience won’t stop us from camping near waterways or beaches again. Although I’m resigned to the fact that we’ll probably get bitten by midges from time to time, we will take more precautions to prevent this extreme event from recurring. We will cover up with long cloths, spray or rub on adequate repellent with more abundance, and carry creams, lotions, and potions to alleviate the after-effects of the midges.
Since the repellents I have used are all chemical-based, I’d like to check out a few natural versions to see if their claims stand true.
I’ll even ensure our little 12V zappers are charged and on before and during bedtime. Even though they seem to work more for mozzies, I’ll try every trick in the book to prevent this terrible experience from happening again. The more flying insects that can be attracted to the light, the better.
Although we have mesh screens in our campervan and all my other swags, tents and camping gear, having fine midge-proof mesh is an important consideration.
As a last resort, I’d be willing to look like a fool wandering around camp with an electronic swatter – you know, the ones that look like a small tennis racket, aiming for anything that might fly within reach of my backhand stroke. It might not make any difference, but it would add some humour to our camping experience.
MARK’S WISE WORDS
Travel isn’t always easy or comfortable. It’s often hard, painful and itchy, but it is always worth the pain, tears and wounds, so let your travels teach and change you for the better. Scratch, learn from your experience and move to the next campsite!
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Source: https://www.gorv.com.au/midges-and-how-to-avoid-them/
