Signs of termites in a Cairns home - what to actually look for.
You will not see the termite. You will see a pencil-width mud tube on a pier, a skirting that sounds wrong when you tap it, or a scatter of wings on the sill after the first storm. Here is the checklist, and the one thing you must not do when you find something.
Six signs, none of which is a termite.
Rarely termites themselves - you almost never see the insect until the damage is well advanced, because Coptotermes and Mastotermes work inside timber and never break the surface. What you see first is secondary: a mud tube the width of a pencil running up a pier, a slab edge or a retaining wall; a section of skirting or architrave that sounds hollow and drums differently when you tap it; paint that has blistered or bubbled in a way that looks like water damage but is bone dry; a door or window that has suddenly started to stick; a floorboard with a slight give underfoot; and after the first storms, a scatter of discarded wings on a windowsill. Any single one of those is worth an inspection, not a wait-and-see.
The reason all six are indirect is worth understanding, because it explains why people miss them for years. A subterranean termite is intolerant of dry air and light. It will not expose itself. It eats timber from the inside out, following the soft spring growth and leaving the harder grain and a paper-thin skin of surface timber intact. Your architrave still looks like an architrave. Behind two millimetres of paint and veneer there may be nothing at all. The whole diagnostic art is reading the signs the insect leaves behind rather than looking for the insect.
Where to look on a Cairns house.
- Slab edge and weep holes - the most common entry on a modern Edmonton or Smithfield estate build. Look for mud bridging over the edge or plugging a weep hole.
- Piers and stumps - on a highset, run a torch along every pier and ant cap. A tube climbing past an ant cap is the cap doing its job by making the lead visible.
- Wet areas - under the bathroom, behind the laundry trough, around the hot water unit and any external tap. Moisture is the invitation.
- Garden interfaces - retaining wall sleepers, garden edging, fence posts, old stumps and any timber in soil contact within a metre of the house.
- The roof void - mud galleries packed into a rafter three metres above the entry point, which is the classic Coptotermes signature.
- Trees - a mature gum or poinciana with a cracked base or hollow within 30 metres. That is where the nest usually is. If it stands on the verge it is a Cairns Regional Council street tree, so works on it are a request to Council rather than something to take a chainsaw to - but tell us it is there, because a Council tree hosting a nest is still the thing feeding your house.
A torch, a screwdriver handle for tapping, and twenty minutes will cover all six. It is not a substitute for an AS 3660.2 inspection with a moisture meter and sub-floor access, but it is a great deal better than nothing and it is free.
Mud tube, wasp nest or just dirt?
A termite lead is a purposeful, roughly cylindrical tube of soil and faecal cement that runs in a line, usually vertically, connecting soil to timber. It is uniform in width, often pencil to thumb thickness, and it goes somewhere - it is a covered road, not a blob. A mud-dauber wasp nest is a lumpy plastered mound with visible finger-like cells, stuck to a wall in one spot, going nowhere. Ordinary splash mud is irregular and does not climb. The test people reach for is breaking the tube open, and that is exactly the wrong move on a Cairns property. Photograph it and leave it intact.
Wings on the sill: alate or flying ant?
After the first heavy storms from November onward you may find a pile of discarded wings on a windowsill or in a light fitting. Termite alates have two pairs of wings of equal length, a straight-sided body with no pinched waist, and straight beaded antennae. Flying ants have a narrow waist, elbowed antennae, and front wings clearly longer than the rear pair. Termite wings also shed in a neat pile because the alate drops all four at once after landing. Bag a few and keep them - it is genuinely useful to a technician, and the difference between species changes the treatment. More on the seasonal pattern at wet season pest control.
Coptotermes or Mastotermes?
Size and damage pattern, and it genuinely matters because the treatment differs. Coptotermes acinaciformis is the common one nationally, builds a central nest often in a tree stump or under a slab, and produces fine mud galleries in structural timber. Mastotermes darwiniensis - the giant northern termite - is essentially a tropical-north problem and is a different order of trouble: the soldiers are noticeably large, the colonies run past a million individuals, it will eat almost anything cellulose including live trees, rubber, leather and plastic cable sheathing, and it works far faster. If a Cairns homeowner reports damage that seems to have appeared implausibly quickly, Mastotermes is the first thing we think of. Identification is a technician job, not a photo job.
Do not break the tube. Seriously.
Because you will lose the colony. Break an active lead and the foragers read it as a breach, seal off that gallery within days, abandon it and re-route somewhere else - very often into a wall cavity or under a floor where the next visible sign is a skirting collapsing two years later. You have not stopped anything. You have destroyed the one piece of evidence a technician can trace back to the nest, and made the treatment considerably harder and more expensive. Photograph it, mark the location, do not touch it, and book an inspection. Same rule applies to spraying it with a can of surface spray, which achieves nothing except scattering the lead.
We understand why people do it. There is a tube on your pier and every instinct says find out what is in there. But an intact, active lead is a live connection between your house and a nest, and modern treatment works by exploiting that connection - non-repellent termiticide or bait that foragers carry home to the colony. Break the road and you have thrown away the delivery route. The options in detail are on termite barrier types and termite control.
The first hour, in order.
Four things, in order. Do not touch, break, spray or vacuum anything - leave the lead, the tube and the insects exactly where they are. Photograph what you have found and note precisely where it is. Do not move furniture or start pulling at the affected timber, because you may be holding up more than you think. Then ring a licensed technician and book an inspection, describing what you saw rather than what you think it is. The single most valuable thing you have at that moment is an undisturbed site, and it takes about ten seconds of curiosity to destroy it.
What catching it early is worth.
A Coptotermes lead found intact on a pier at a Redlynch highset, reported without being touched. The technician traces it, finds the nest in a stump on the rear boundary, treats with a non-repellent transfer product, and installs a retrofit perimeter. Inspection $290, treatment and barrier $3,200 in the $1,500 to $5,000 band, one architrave and a bearer end replaced at $2,400. Total near $5,900, house structurally fine, and the annual inspection continues at around $290 a year from there.
Same house, same lead, broken open with a screwdriver in year one because someone wanted a look. Colony abandons the pier, re-enters through a slab penetration behind the bathroom, and is found in year three when a floor tile lifts. Wall frame across two rooms, bathroom rebuild, propping and a builder: comfortably past $30,000, none of it claimable, which is covered on termite damage and insurance. The difference between those two numbers is one decision that took ten seconds.
What Cairns homeowners ask after they find something.
How fast can termites do real damage here?
Faster than the national averages suggest, because our soil is warm and wet year-round and there is no winter slowdown. A Coptotermes colony with a good food source can cause significant structural damage inside twelve to eighteen months. Mastotermes is quicker again. The often-quoted ‘three months to serious damage’ line is marketing, but so is any suggestion that you have years to think about it.
There are no signs at all. Am I safe?
No, and this is the uncomfortable part. The absence of visible signs means the accessible areas are clear on the day. It says nothing about wall cavities, under fixed floor coverings, or the sub-floor you cannot get into. That gap is exactly what an annual inspection with a moisture meter and a proper sub-floor entry is for, and why the report’s limitations clause matters.
My house is brick. Doesn’t that make it safe?
No. Brick veneer is a skin over a timber frame, and the frame is the meal. Even full masonry homes have roof timbers, door jambs, skirtings and floors. Termites do not eat brick; they walk around it through a weep hole or a slab penetration and get to the timber behind it. We have treated plenty of brick homes in Earlville and Smithfield.
My neighbour just had termites. Should I worry?
You should book an inspection, yes. Foraging ranges of up to 50 metres or more from a central nest mean a colony treating your neighbour’s house as a food source is well within reach of yours, and a treatment next door can push foragers to look for an alternative. It is one of the few genuine reasons to bring an inspection forward.
Service areas across the Cairns region.
Found something? Do not touch it - just send us the photo.
AS 3660.2 inspection with moisture meter, sub-floor and roof-void access and a dated written report. $235 to $380 for most Cairns homes. QBCC-licensed termite management, AEPMA member.