What's different around Maroubra
Malabar Headland
The national park runs between Maroubra and Malabar beaches and protects eastern suburbs banksia scrub, a critically endangered plant community. NSW National Parks lists the common ringtail possum there, feeding in the trees on eucalypt leaves, flowers and fruit.
An exotic mosquito at Matraville
On 4 March 2025, NSW Health recorded a female Aedes aegypti at Matraville, the only exotic mosquito find that year away from Sydney International Airport. Authorities answer finds like this with insecticide work and extra traps, checked for up to 40 days. There's nothing for a homeowner to book.
The Sydney regulars
Back from the beach it's the usual city list. The Australian Museum rates the German cockroach the most troublesome cockroach in Sydney, and European wasps are firmly established across the metropolitan area.
Possum in the roof near the headland?
Possums are protected in NSW, so the job is proofing the roof. Trapping one, or catching and releasing it, is illegal without a licence. Whoever holds that licence has to let it go at dusk, no more than 150 metres from where it was caught, beside something it can climb straight away.
Gaps get closed only once you're sure it has left to forage, usually at night, or you shut it in. Ask anyone quoting the job whether they hold a current possum licence, and see our Sydney possum page for what the work involves.
What's yours, and what isn't
You can
- Keep bins lidded and bring pet food in overnight, so rats have less reason to visit.
- Empty pot bases, buckets and blocked gutters, where mosquitoes breed.
- Photograph droppings, gnaw marks or a nest from a safe distance before anyone comes out.
Leave to a pest business
- Any wasp nest. Keep people and pets clear and leave it alone.
- A German cockroach problem that keeps coming back in the kitchen.
- Proofing roof gaps against possums, and any catch and release that has to happen.
Where we'd start with pests in Maroubra
Work out what you've actually got before paying for anything. A noise in the roof could be a possum or a rat, and the fix is different for each. Tell us what you've seen, with your postcode.
Want someone to look at it?
Tell us what you've seen and your postcode, and a local pest business that handles exactly that calls you to talk it through.
