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Welcome to the Red Zone.
Cars from The Department patrol the streets. Agents in high-vis go door to door, looking for invaders hiding in plain sight.
Cryptic surveillance devices appear across the neighbourhood. Posters and leaflets urge citizens to be vigilant and to play their part in the Eradication Project.
Because they are among us. And a single, undetectable puncture will leave you with thousands of them bursting out of your skin.
Credit: Rockwell McGellin
If you’re a lemon, that is.
Or any of the other 300 plant species susceptible to Qfly – the Queensland fruit fly.
Qfly don’t bother me
For humans, life in the Red Zone – also known as South Perth – goes on as normal with a couple of changes under the eye of the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD).
Queensland fruit fly is an insect that hops from fruit to soil and back as part of its life cycle. So far, despite some close calls, it hasn’t established a foothold in WA. But in April 2026, a network of surveillance devices detected an infestation on the southern shore of the Derbal Yerrigan/Swan River.
Credit: Rockwell McGellin
That network is mostly jars hanging from trees, loaded with bait that’s irresistible to fruit flies. Since then, quarantine workers have been checking backyard trees, from verges to backyards.
If you’re lucky, your tree will get a pretty ribbon – and be squirted with a brown goop combining an irresistible sugar syrup with a chemical from a soil bacterium that only kills fruit flies.
Qfly and A
According to its latest update, DPIRD has deployed 5,743 lures and 2,522 litres of brown goop and made 17,610 home visits since April.
It’s a huge effort spread over hundreds of streets and thousands of homes.
Credit: Rockwell McGellin
Without community awareness, the job gets a lot harder. If curiosity about the slightly ominous cars doing laps of the neighbourhood gets locals searching for Qfly facts, maybe that’s a good thing.
It seems to be working. DPIRD successfully repelled 10 invasion attempts since 1989, and since the latest eradication project started in April, the Red Zone has been confined to south of the river.
Until a better option comes along, goop, jars and flyers are the best tools we have.
