Ballarat is cold. The winters here start earlier and bite harder than anywhere in Melbourne, and that is why rats and mice are the biggest pest call in the city by a wide margin. From March, when the first frosts hit the paddocks around Miners Rest, Alfredton and Delacombe, the mice move off the cropping land and into the nearest garage. By May the rats are coming off Lake Wendouree, the Yarrowee Creek and the old mining reserves into the roof voids and subfloors of the Victorian and Edwardian homes that make up half of Ballarat East, Soldiers Hill and the old town. The goldfields-era housing stock, with its timber floors, cellars, open vents and a hundred and fifty years of small gaps, is about as easy for a rat to get into as a house can be, and the season runs right through to October.
The rest of the year has its own pattern. Spring and summer bring ants out of the dry ground into kitchens, spiders web the deep verandahs and the bluestone, the brick estates in Alfredton and Lucas get the new-build ant and spider load, and the student rentals around the university in Mount Helen and the rentals across Sebastopol and Wendouree turn over with cockroaches and fleas between tenants. We treat all of it, and we give you the price on the phone before anyone drives out.