A bowls tournament in Longreach, in central western Queensland, will go ahead this weekend, despite the town’s largest locust plague in three decades.

The spur-throated locusts have been in the town for a week, eating trees, gardens and pastures.

Tony Barbeler from the Longreach Bowling Club says the grasshoppers have invaded the greens and he has never seen anything like it.

“It looks like a storm of locusts coming off the green as you walk along … it’s different to what we’re used to anyway,” he said.

“It shouldn’t have an impact on the bowls – they are pretty smart and get out of the road when the bowls come. They’ve only eaten the top off it [the green] which is what we do with the mower anyway, we mow it down.”

Mr Barbeler says visiting bowlers from out of town will be amazed at the swarms.

“I don’t know what they’ll do but they’ll have to learn to play under our conditions too I suppose … but I know I drove to Ilfracombe yesterday and the grasshoppers stopped just the other side of the pastoral college [on the outskirts of town],” he said.

“We play through anything anyway. We’ve never had them before so I don’t really know but they shouldn’t worry us.”