Neighbours' holiday misfortune leads to Aussie woman's drastic act over fence

A woman has copped backlash for a drastic over-the-fence move after her neighbour's pool turned into a "swamp" while they were away on holiday, sending "millions of mosquitos" her way.

The NSW resident detailed her "gross" pest predicament online, revealing that after initially contemplating jumping over the fence to pull the cover over the pool, she ended up throwing 2kg of chlorine over the fence and into the water in an attempt to clear it up and stop the infestation — a drastic act that not all Aussies agreed with.

While some people commented on how foul the pool looked, others were not impressed with the woman taking matters into her own hands. "Is that allowed?" one social media user asked. "Just so we clear it's most definitely illegal to throw chemicals in someone else’s pool (sic)," another added.

The woman replied that the brother of the neighbour showed up and was happy she threw the chlorine into the water. "Dunno if it's allowed but we did it anyway (sic). It's pool chlorine so not going to hurt anything. The brother showed up today and was thankful we did it," she explained.

She claimed a scheduled power outage had "tripped" the pool's filter but after noticing someone had entered the yard, the neighbours sent a relative around to find out what happened and turn the filter back on.

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Mosquito infested pool a public health risk

Mosquitos need water to complete their life cycles and poorly maintained swimming pools make an ideal environment for mosquitoes to breed. The Townsville City Council say that if a pool's chemical parameters are not maintained at the minimum required levels and/or the filtration system is not functioning correctly, the pool becomes a public health risk.

As mosquitoes can transmit serious diseases, each jurisdiction in Australia has a mosquito management plan which includes backyard swimming pools — some states even carry fines for people who do not appropriately take care of their pools for this reason.

Ways to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in your pool include:

• Regularly treat the water with chemicals such as chlorine.

• Thoroughly clean the pool and surrounds.

• Operate the filtration system.

• If you do not use your pool you can convert it into a pond by following appropriate guidelines.

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