As we later found out it was also pretty useful in getting rid of unwanted neighbours, mischievous children, stray cats and dog ,in fact any living creature. It probably is still lurking somewhere around your backyard continuing on with its evil ways.

If you wanted to kill something, DDT was your go to solution!

These were the days of Allan Seale's gardening show on the ABC, every Sunday morning. Allan,with his unusual lisp, was a star on black and white tv, with some pretty ho-hum guests.

When colour tv arrived that beautiful french temptress Jean Ducher was absolutely glorious as she lit up the screen with her most exotic shades of apricot and alluring fragrance.

Well not exactly fragrance, but I think you get the idea!

Allan was an expert when it came to roses. He knew how to nurture, manicure, pamper, delight and fondle those most fragile of nature's creations. He even had success with that fickle, fragile socialite, Rose Porteus, who had to have her own special diet plan.

These were the days when our neighbours, Mr and Mrs Morris, who owned a Morris car, a Morris Minor, delighted in showing off their own rose garden.

Mr Morris had a lawn that a golf superintendent would die for. It was couch grass, not your every day couch, but blue couch.

When it had been dowsed in DDT, there wasn't an ant, a fly, a worm, a spider, or a cockroach hiding in the roots of this showpiece. It was like an Axminster carpet adorning your back garden.

Back then most backyards were kept under control by either a Victa or a Pace lawnmower. Mr Morris had one of those mowers that greenkeepers use.

On the other hand our yard couldn't decide if it was a cow paddock or a modern '60s suburban showpiece. The kikuyu grass kept growing, just waiting for the day when the Ethel the jersey cow would have a bit of a friendly munch on its long locks.

Eventually, my mother convinced Nifty to purchase a lawn mower. It was a Red Pace two stroke. He bought it second hand off Tommy Crocket. Only problem was Tommy Crocket was a mechanic and Nifty was a fisherman!

Nifty was relieved when the '60s moved into the '70s and suddenly there was no DDT and people started planting gumtrees in their front yards.

The backyards were being filled with native species, like bottle brush, wattle, western australian eucalypts etc. Instead of killing everything we just started planting.

It didn't matter what it was, if it was green it was good.

Like our new neighbours who put in a couple of rubber trees and soon found the foundations of their house starting to move.

But there were never any 50-foot gumtrees planted in our front yard. As it was we were having trouble keeping the bush across the road at Pilot St from blocking our view of the sand at Beilbys Beach and preventing the sea breeze from cooling our house.

What were once the fairways of an old golf course were now like the apocalypse described in that thought provoking book The Day of the Triffids. A science fiction horror where alien plants start to not only grow exponentially but also start walking and strangling people.

Where once we could go whale watching from our front porch we now had to hop in a car and line up with the thousand other whale lovers up on Pilot Hill Lookout.

The cooling nor' easter no longer wafted through the windows that had been a design feature of the house when it was built. That breeze was now only available to the kookaburras, magpies, yellow tailed cockatoos and sparrows that were able to live in penthouse suites in the tops of sheoak with a view of the majestic Pacific Ocean.

And then the next day, after a lovely cool night's rest, had the audacity to fly over your hot tin roof and leave their calling card in the form of a nice fresh bird shit!

We now had to call on Razor MacPherson to install ceiling fans in every room, even the toilet!

Along with our electricity bill and council rates, everything kept going up including the gum trees, rubber trees, bamboo, lantana, and the threat of bushfire

I reckon if that nor' easter had been allowed to cool our house like it had done when it was built in the 1950s, Pilot St alone could have played a big part in preventing potentially catastrophic climate change!

But no, even people started wearing green clothing, cars were green and the term greenie came into being.

I know when I went to school a greenie meant something entirely different to what it had now morphed into.

Old Allan Seale has long gone and so has his attention to the finest detail when tending to plants. The good thing about roses is you cut them back in winter and they spring into bloom after a vigorous flush of new shoots.

Where is he now when you need him?

The Indigenous peoples 50,000 years ago had it all sorted. When they set up a campsite, chances were, if it wasn't beside a river or an ocean with a clear view to the kangaroos hopping around, then they made damn sure they could, by burning and clearing the adjacent bush.

Any living thing needs care, you just don't let it go wildly about its business. I know Norma Eliza spent almost a lifetime keeping Neville Clyde under control.

And you just don't let the bushland in our towns go unattended, eventually becoming delinquents, causing us to buy air conditioners, burning down our houses, killing our residents and destroying families in the process.

We don't need The Day of The Triffids 2.0.

Get Allan Seale on the phone .Anyone who can tend to that fickle creature. Rose Porteus could quite easily sort out a delinquent gum tree!

And after a good haircut we all feel like a million dollars, even that wayward eucalypt!

Blue ringed octopus and flying claw hammers at Nambucca

Dressed to thrill at Macksville