Wangaratta fisherman, ***, said he had used a pressure pack insect spray to clear mosquitoes from a van in which he and a friend were camping in 1963.
They immediately became ill and vomited for two hours.
*** said he had seen a large quantity of dead minnows and carp taken from a lagoon near Myrtleford after an aircraft had passed over on a spraying run.
Near Whitfield, he had found 12 small trout dead in the King River after a storm.
A nearby farmer had told him that 10 days before he had sprayed blackberries on the bank, and had agreed that the rain had probably washed the poison into the stream.
Wangaratta Fly Fishing Club president, ***, said there appeared to have been a general decline in the sizes of rainbow trout taken from the King river in recent years…
***, said his theory was pesticides used in the area caused a slow poisoning of fish, both directly and through poisoned insects on which they fed.
He said that as a fisherman and not a naturalist he had also observed over the past eight years a decline in bird life along the Ovens, King and nearby streams…
Newspaper Article 1966. (Victorian Pesticide Inquiry)