Julia Creek, Richmond at epicentre of native rat plague

The native long-haired rat - Rattus villosissimus - began appearing in numbers in the north west around four months ago, building up to the plague proportions now being experienced.

Rob Ievers owns Winchester Station south west of Richmond and said he'd been impacted by them, in his paddocks, sheds and home for months.

"Their burrows are in the paddocks - I've been uncovering them when I'm grading," he said. "You can see them running all through the paddocks."

A rubber hose purchased at a hardware store had turned into a soaker hose by the following morning, and the 60 litres of poison purchased had almost all been used with little effect.

Doors to his home were being gnawed, as well as carpets.

"The cold weather didn't seem to move them - we might just have to wait," Mr Ievers said.

"But they affect you terribly, the extra workload they give you. I've never seen it as bad as this."

According to the CSIRO's mouse expert Steve Henry, poison probably wouldn't have an effect on numbers and was more about making people feel they were doing something.

"Barriers are the most effective way of dealing with them but if they're eating the doors, it's very difficult to stop them getting in your house," he said.

"We'd been speculating for about 10 months whether we'd see this, as a result of the amazing season.

"When the Channel Country fills up, that's what happens - the rat's other name is plague rat, for a good reason."

Mr Henry said the rats lived on grains and seeds, and so the plague was a good sign that the country was healthy.

"It's nice to know we haven't messed up their habitat, that's what this shows, but it doesn't make it easy for people," he said, commenting that after the 2021 mouse plague in NSW, a team of social scientists was working on the impacts that had had on the people affected.

He referred to a book by Tim Bonyhady, The Enchantment of the Long-Haired Rat , in which the author says "Possibly no other Australian animal - not even the dingo - responded so aggressively to Europeans", having a hunger for European food and equipment.

"What makes them even more of a nuisance than mice is that they need to keep chewing to keep their teeth down - they're continually growing," Mr Henry said.

Asked how much longer the rats might remain, he said their demise could be sudden, when they run out of food and get stressed, but couldn't say when that might be.

Richmond Shire Council mayor John Wharton said he'd been told they disappeared when the temperature reached 40 degrees.

"I'm pretty sure we'll get to that one of these days," he said.

He recalled in the last plague, around 2011, that rats had cut the fibre optic cable between Townsville and Darwin, at Maxwelton, which had been buried about 1200mm deep.

Cr Wharton said there probably wasn't anything that could be done to lessen the plague from a council point of view.

"We've just got to suck it up and hope they go away soon," he said. "It would be hard to measure the damage done in the paddocks, but the damage to equipment is immense."

That could include damage to planes from bird strikes, given the increased number of birds feeding on the dead rats around.

McKinlay CEO Trevor Williams said all councils operating airports in the north west were taking extra precautions, running their strips and firing off a gas gun to keep birds away while the commercial REX flight landed, doing the same again prior to takeoff.

He agreed that a shire that was 40,000 square kilometres couldn't contemplate control on a widespread basis, and said the next problem they'd likely be dealing with would be feral cats.

"We're seeing lots more already - there'll be an explosion of those numbers next," he said.

Mr Ievers said he'd also seen a lot more around in the last few weeks.

"They can only eat so many - they've got no chance of knocking down the populations."

One of the few positive impacts could be to invasive plants such as parkinsonia and prickly acacia.

Cr Wharton said the rats were ringbarking the younger trees of both species and likely killing them, while Mr Ievers had noticed them digging all around the roots of prickle bushes.

They are sticking to the black soil downs country at present, with the gravelly soil to the west less conducive to making burrows, and Hughenden grazier Brendan McNamara said while he'd trapped a few, they weren't in anything like the numbers further west.

However, people undertaking dunnart research on the McNamara's property had trapped 130 rats at the same time as they'd caught 20 dunnarts.

"That show they are around, even if we don't see a lot," Mr McNamara said.