100's of bites - the itchy kind, not fishing!

[Lozbex]

Hi, my first post on here, would love to share a good story but too busy scratching!

My family and I just returned yesterday from two weeks in our Skamper Kamper at Port Stephens, our first trip pretty much fully off grid. Yeehah! Had a few problems with the solar panel/battery charging but we limped thru! Unfortunately we arrived at the tail end of the rainy week straight after new year, campsite was still a bit boggy and then had another deluge the following week. No major issues with the water per se but the mozzies were in their millions. Aeroguard worked ok-ish, found out towards the end of the trip from a van-site regular nearby that we should have been using Bushman. Lesson learnt. However, along with the mozzies I have since discovered thanks to Google that it looks like we got hit by mites, bird mites I presume. We were under trees, woken daily by the industrious cockatoos doing their necessary pruning of the overhead twigs and there were all sorts of parrots and of course noisy miners and kookaburras. Beautiful at the time but now not so sure .... We have all woken this morning from our comfy beds in our mozzie free home with tons more tiny red marks and all scratching like lunatics. My poor 6yr old daughter looks like she has measles on her legs sand my son has scratched skin off and looks more like he has come a cropper on his bike on gravel So, my question to you all, have you experienced this in your travels, mite infestation after camping beneath trees and what did you do to get rid of them? From the briefest of googling so far it looks like they are incredibly difficult to get rid of Any tips much appreciated, I think we can take care of the bites (peppermint oil baths to kill mites and cortisone for the actual bites and/or anti-hystemine drugs) but its the clothing bedding etc that I am concerned about, and the actual tent, maybe even my car. Looks like we can get re-infested with any contact. Thanks!

[robcaz]

We have never had a problem with mites dropping off birds in trees but we have been covered with ticks dropping from the trees. We have also had close encounters with mozzies & midgees when camping & of course ants. We always carry anti-hystemine in our first aid kit to combat any irritation from the above. I remember driving into the chemist at Bundaberg to get some anti-hystemine/cortisone cream for our kids legs to stop the itch from midgees.

Seeing we are going through a bit of a hot spell at the moment you could set your camper up in the yard & remove everything including the mattress & lay that in the sun. They would have to be pretty tough to survive a 40 degree day. Wash everything you can. Now you have me itching as I write this

There must be a natural spray that will kill them & not destroy the waterproofing of the canvas as would anything with a solvent base.

Some people are allergic to different chemical sprays so anything you use try a little on the back of your hand first. We have used equal parts detol & baby oil as a deterrent. Some use a third equal detol, baby oil & metho. If you google something like 'sandfly repellent recipe' you will find a few different 'natural' ingredient recipes.