Did you spot the locust invasion?

Mar 16 2005 Ayrshire Post

THE man behind Maybole’s website, www.maybole.org, was astonished to find news on his computer that locusts had invaded Maybole!

On closer reading, Rich Pettit realised the story was about another Maybole — in Australia.

Rich, who lives in Clearwater, Florida, was trawling the web to see if there were any new references to the capital of Carrick.

He told us: “I couldn’t figure out how locusts could be in Maybole in the middle of winter — then I realised it happened in Australia.”

The Australian Maybole is more of a locality than a town, and is on the border of Inverell Shire and Severn Shire, in the New England area of New South Wales.

According to Dorothy Ever, who has B & B accommodation in the area, Maybole is 16 to 18 kilometres north west of Ben Lomond on the Great Dividing Range.

Her Silent Grove farmstay B & B is 7 kilometres from Ben Lomond on the Maybole road.

Nearby Glen Innes is known as Celtic Country, and is the site of the Australian Standing Stones, which are unique in the Southern Hemisphere and officially recognised as the national monument to Australia’s Celtic pioneers.

Maybole’s website www. maybole.org had 854,047 hits in February, and time spent on the site by people from all over the world totalled an incredible 3,261 hours!