Urban Pest Management in Australia

Phillip Hadlington OAM received his Order of Australia Medal in 2000 for his contribution to the Australian community both directly, and indirectly through his education of the pest management industry – which in turn serves the community. In the 1950s, the NSW state government decided that technical training of pest controllers was needed, and Hadlington was chosen to start a course to train technicians. With one of his students, Ion Staunton, he self-published the first textbook, Pests of Australian Homes and Industry, in 1961. The newly formed University of New South Wales Press Limited published the next edition with additional chapters in 1963. With John Gerozisis, a completely rewritten textbook, Urban Pest Control in Australia, was released 22 years later and has been the pest controller’s bible for almost 40 years. In 1963, he called the meeting at which the Australian Pest Controllers Association was formed. He turned 40 a few weeks later. His close-up photography used throughout this book began with funnel web spiders. He used his 97 years so well.John Gerozisis is a Science graduate from the University of New South Wales, majoring in Entomology and Zoology. He then worked in the industry as an entomologist and consultant and taught NSW TAFE’s pest control course for ten years. With Phillip Hadlington, he kept Urban Pest Management up to date until 2004. The improvements between the first Hadlington/Staunton textbook and that 2004 revised version are due to Gerozisis’s knowledge and efforts. He spent another ten years with a leading Sydney building consultancy before retiring to Tasmania.Ion Staunton came back to the pest control scene to do the revisions for the 2008 edition as well as this new edition. He, like Gerozisis, studied entomology at UNSW. He became the technical officer at Houghton & Byrne (before they were taken over by Rentokil) and spent 25 years as honorary secretary of the NSW Pest Controllers Association and the Council of Australian Pest Control Associations. He helped in setting up the new Australian Environmental Pest Managers Association and organised his last national conference in 1988 but kept in touch with executive director Doug Howick during his more than ten years at the helm. With Howick, he co-wrote Colonies in Collision, a history of the pest control industry. In collaboration with Lextar and Pesense, he made his idea of the TermiSensor a reality. It allows daily electronic checks for termite activity in monitors instead of manual inspections multiple times each year, saving manhours and travel time, and eliminating those missed opportunities to bait.