Ah, our lovely colonial island home, where migrants and scientists alike brought species this land had never before seen, enhancing what was already here stuffing up the place with foxes in a place with no other primary predator, feral cats, rabbits (which, incidentally, were released not a kilometre from where I live), cane toads and invasive plants. No wonder our border control is seen as so important. These days we are more cautious about biological imports. History has told us it's not such a good idea.

One of these unwelcome guests were the prickly pear, known in South America as the nopal cactus. To me, it was reminscent of the suburban Western Suburbs of Melbourne where I grew up until I was about ten years old, where the wasteland of dry paddocks stretched into no man's land of rusting barbed wire, rotting fence posts, rabbit warrens, scotch thistles and box thorns. Prickly pear was not for falling in, and god forbid you tried to pick one of it's crimson fruits, lest you became like the echidna, quilled with spikes. For the huge Maltese community in that area, however, the prickly pear was a delicacy, according to my father. And he was right - like Mexico where an eagle perches atop a nopal cactus, one of the Maltese coat of arms is said to have a prickly pear. Like many things, he waxes lyrical about that taste of childhood where he and his brothers shot rabbits to sustain the family diet in a poor migrant family along with the rest of them that came out post war.

The prickly pear has become part of Australia's history, despised rather than revered as a food or a natural medicine - to me, it is unfathomable that it could be used for a medicine or to make vegan tacos. And so this post becomes part one of an inquiry into this invasive pest, because not ten miles from here there is a hedge of it, and my curious nature is piqued.

In 1787, Opuntia monacantha was introduced here from Rio de Janeiro, here to develop the cochineal industry as they were host for this particular industry. Landowners grew hedges of it around their homesteads until they proliferated so much they were hacked down. They adapted quickly to the lesser rainfall than their native home, and by 1900, over 10,000,000 acres in Queensland and New South Wales were invaded by this migrant plant. By 1925, there was over six times that amount by some estimates. From one imported cutting, we ended up with multitudes - 'equivalent to the whole land area of the United Kingdom or New Zealand'.¹

Fancy a drive through the cactus fields, anyone?

To me, adding to this gothic horror story that seems a queer mix of John Wyndam of Triffid fame and perhaps something more gothic colonial like Henry Lawson, the attempts at eradication send chills down one's spine:

In an attempt to stop the spread of the plants, the Queensland Department of Lands introduced a bounty scheme for the slaughter of emus, crows and scrub magpies and the collection of emu eggs. They thought that by reducing the numbers of birds this would in turn reduced the spread of seeds. From the beginning to 1926 until the end of 1927 over 200,000 birds were killed and over 100,000 emus eggs were destroyed.

Forget about sharks - the prickly pear was the larger menace! Image from The Sydney Mail, 1923

In the end, they were offering 1.3 million to anyone who could solve the problem. The government, only just formed in 1901, sent scientists all over the world, where they finally found a moth that obliterated it with millions of larvae.

The invaded land was reclaimed, much of which was given to returned soldiers who had their own nightmares on land that was largely unworkable - but that's another story.

The discovery of the prickly pear hedge in the town over from me in the Autumn as the fruits sit tantalizingly pink in the sunshine was exciting in many ways. I have read so many posts here about the benefit of nopal, but have skimmed over them because the word did not summon up the vision of prickly pear from my childhood and the historical cultural memory of Australia. Reluctantly, my man picked me a fruit, using a strip of plastic from a nearby tree guard and using his credit card to slice it.

!

The Maltese didn't do that, I know - they soak it in water to soften the spikes and scrub them off - but we are out walking, and I am impatient and excitable as always. I relish it - it does taste of summer, watery and refreshing after a long walk. But what excites me is that I know it's a natural medicine, and I'm about to go off on another journey of exploration.

Of course, my man is spiked, and tries to suppress his annoyance, knowing how I needed to know, to taste, to experience, to satiate my curiosity.

What do you know about the prickly pear?

Do you use it as a medicine?

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