Acknowledgement: ‘Horses and Bullocks Important in Pioneering Upper Hunter’, Scone Advocate, 2 October 1962 and Letter to the Editor, Scone Advocate, 12 October 1962.

Reprinted in ‘Mac Bridge; The Man and his Recollections’ by Heather Ashford and Margaret Ashford-Macdougall 1983, Scone and Upper Hunter Historical Society, 1983 Bi-Centennial Publication No. 2

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Prickly Pear growing in Scone District July 1933

Methods of control were many and varied, some intuitive and inventive. Mr Bakewell of St Aubins designed a special bullock-drawn ‘Pear Crusher’. It wasn’t until the introduction of Cactoblastis moths from Argentina in 1925 that real progress was achieved. Prior to that Australia was losing ground to the pear at the rate of one million acres annually.