In the 1990s, scientists in Australia began searching for the origins of a new disease showing up in places hundreds of kilometres apart. They discovered the origin: bats. And found a way to reduce the risk of bat disease spillovers
The virus could have appeared in many places on the east coast, but it is a strange coincidence, in the light of later scientific discoveries, that it first became known in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra. The high school is named Aviation High, and the streets are bordered by the international airport and aerospace buildings to the east.
Hendra today is a booming suburb just off the M1 motorway, but for much of the 20th century the neat rows of houses enjoyed pastoral space on the outskirts of the city. When the Eagle Farm Racecourse was built, Hendra became the horse-racing hub of south-east Queensland. It was common to see horse floats parked out the front of the houses, and trainers walking their horses down the streets before daybreak. Over time, the ample paddocks filled with thoroughbreds reared for the tracks. It was in one of these paddocks, in September 1994, that a heavily pregnant bay mare named Drama Series took ill. She was quickly moved to a nursing stable, where she died of a mystery condition.
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