Australian town under siege from ‘hairy panic’

A car is swamped by a fast-growing tumbleweed outside a home in the town of Wangaratta, 250 kilometres north-east of Melbourne. Channel 7 / AFP Photo

SYDNEY // Hairy panic is paralysing parts of an Australian town — but it’s not quite the existential nightmare it sounds, just a fast-growing tumbleweed.

Homes in Wangaratta are being inundated with the evocatively named plant pest, with some residents having to spend hours digging out their driveways.

The town is no stranger to the native prickly menace, usually swept in by winds during the hot and dry summer months.

But this season has seen an unusual amount of hairy panic — known scientifically as Panicum effusum — with hundreds of thousands of the fuzzy, yellowish plants swamping the entrances of homes, drives and gardens.

“It’s a fairly significant problem,” said Rod Roscholler, an administrator for Wangaratta, 250 kilometres north-east of Melbourne.

“For whatever reason, the climate, the weather, the temperatures, the rains, must have combined for it to be a ‘bumper crop’ this year,” he said.

Residents spend hours clearing the weeds, piles of which can reach up to the roof.

“It’s physically draining and mentally more draining,” Pam Twitchett said.

Jordan Solimo, a carpenter, said the “hundreds of thousands” of tumbleweed, which contains toxins that can be deadly for sheep, were so numerous he was not able to open his back door.

“They’re covering the front of a couple of people’s [houses],” Mr Solimo said, adding that the problem started around Christmas.

“A lot of people’s backyards get filled up with them. I tried to get out of my back door the other day but I couldn’t, it was just full of tumbleweed.”

Mr Solimo said he would wait for winds to temporarily move the thin, wire-like grass or use a leaf blower to clear them away, “and then it’s all good before the next lot comes”.

* Agence France-Presse