The situation is hopeless...
By 1925, prickly pear was completely out of control, infesting some twenty-five million hectares in New South Wales and Queensland. It was spreading at the rate of half a million hectares a year and nobody could stop its progress!
Tremendous effort went into mechanical and chemical treatment programs, but the pear could not be contained.
The historical photo, right, shows one of the early and drastic treatment methods - fumes from a boiling arsenic mixture drifting across the pear (circa 1919 - photographer unknown). According to former Commissioner Garry Ryan, this method was used with some success during the clearing of land for the building of the Moree-Boggabilla railway line.
NB. The Queensland Prickly Pear Land Commission 1926 annual report stated that the amount of poison sold in Queensland that year would treat 9,450,000 tons of prickly pear! Chemicals included 31,100 (10 & 20lb) tins of arsenic pentoxide and 27,950 containers (ranging in size from 2g earthenware jars to 42g steel drums) of Roberts Improved Pear Poison. (I have no figures for the chemical treatment program undertaken in New South Wales during this same period.)