What's different in Riverstone
A growth area
The NSW planning department says Riverstone's plan was finalised in May 2010, opening the way for up to 9,000 new homes. Brand new streets now sit alongside the existing town, and each kind of house raises different pest questions.
A flood history
The Riverstone Town Centre proposal, finalised in April 2026, aims for a more flood resilient neighbourhood after the 2021 and 2022 floods across the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley. After any big rain, walk the yard for standing water, because that's where mosquitoes breed.
Cumberland Plain Woodland
Blacktown City Council's Bushcare program protects this rare woodland, and the council names foxes and rabbits among the invasive species that disturb it. Those are land management issues more than household jobs.
I've got a new house. Do I still need to think about termites?
Yes, though the first step is paperwork, not a treatment. In modern buildings, the National Construction Code requires a notice of the termite management system, usually in the meter box. It shows the system used, its installation date and the recommended scope and frequency of future inspections.
The system is there to stop termites getting in unseen, and the inspections are what catch activity early. In an older Riverstone home there may be no notice at all, and that's when an inspection tells you where you stand. If you ever find termites, don't disturb them: leave the mud tubes and timber for the inspector.
Your first year in a new Riverstone home
- Find the termite notice, take a photo and put the next inspection in your calendar.
- Before you add a deck, shed or raised garden bed against the house, ask how it affects the termite system.
- Keep mulch and soil from building up over the slab edge and weep holes.
- Tip out water from pot bases, trailers and buckets at least weekly.
- Fit fly screens to windows and doors before your first summer.
What about a possum in the roof?
Blacktown City Council says a possum in a roof can only be trapped under a special licence, that it must be released back onto your property, and that poisoning possums is an offence. The NSW rule adds the detail: release at dusk, no more than 150 metres from where it was caught, near something it can climb straight away.
What we'd do about pests in Riverstone
Go and read the notice in your meter box today. If there isn't one, or the inspection date has passed, a termite inspection is the job to line up, and you can start by picking Termites on this page. Everything else can wait until you've actually seen something.
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.
