The whining buzz is near your ear, almost inside it. You quickly slap a hand to the side of the head.

There’s a ringing noise and a dull ache. Worth it, though, you’ve got the little so-and-so. The ringing and the aching slowly fade as you settle down and doze off. Then it starts all over again.

In Sydney we had the perfect conditions for mosquitos: warm, damp Summers near the sea and luxuriant vegetation. It rained so much one Summer, we starting calling Mosman ‘Macondo’, the place in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude where it rained non-stop for four years. That Summer there were mozzies everywhere and I constantly scratched. We bought a net to drape over the bed at night.

Visitors to this part of the world, where it’s so dry, are surprised that we have mozzies in Summer. But we have them by the thousands. Sometimes swarms of them cloud the air.

Despite flyscreens on windows and doors, there are usually at least half a dozen in our bedroom at night, along with an array of other flying insects. That’s when we’re glad we hung onto the old mozzie net.

Friends who have a vineyard surrounded by grassland, don’t have mozzies. We think it’s the trees that attract them here and the dams on all the properties around about.

And in recent years the creek at the bottom of the hill hasn’t had the sort of flow it should have had. Stagnant water is great for mozzie breeding.

I’ve had more than my fair share of mozzie bites since we’ve been here, some driving me mad for days, keeping me awake at night with their maddening itch. My partner doesn’t seem to suffer from them nearly as much. We think it’s because of all the vitamin B he consumes in beer.

A friend who knows about aromatherapy oils suggested a dab of Lavender oil, followed by a dab of Tea-Tree oil on the bites. It worked, for a while, and then I was back to scratching myself raw.

An English friend once told me that she didn’t mind being bitten by mosquitos because scratching the itch was such a divine pleasure. It’s true, it is. But I can’t help thinking that angry-looking sores on legs and ankles are not especially attractive, nor are they particularly healthy.

I was talking to a woman who owns a shop in town that stocks beautiful skincare products. The conversation turned from snake bites to mozzie bites, both of which, we agreed, could be somewhat irritating. I said that I’d tried a few proprietary creams to relieve mozzie bites but they hadn’t worked. 

She told me this: When they were on holiday in Spain, her daughter was badly affected by mosquito bites. On their return to England they went to a chemist shop and bought a tube of cream: Boots Bite & Sting Relief Antihistamine Cream. It contains something called Mepyramine Maleate and it relieves painful bites as well as itching and swelling.

Unable to find it here, I asked my sister who lives in London to send some over. (Hi Cath – we’re all well – I’ll email soon.) My sister’s amazing. Apart from being extraordinarily kind, she can find almost anything, even Mick Jagger’s jeans… but that’s another story.

My sister sent the cream and it’s brilliant. I swear by it when my ankles and legs are puffy with nasty bites after two minutes in the garden at twilight, or after an evening barbie.

On Summer nights when we have friends over, if we sit on the back deck I burn Citronella oil in an old kerosene lamp and light sticks of Lemongrass incense, said to deter mozzies. I think they work to some extent. 

It’s a beautiful day, the birds are singing and I’m in a hurry to weed the garden before the mozzies wake up. If you’d like to know about keeping the little biters at bay, click here. If you know of any other deterrents, please share them with me.