In the small town of Boonraga, Australia, population 36, there was a very normal looking building.

Made out of wood, paint and beige, metal roof.

It's a memorial hole, the kind of hole that country villages build,

so that they've got somewhere to hold meetings, to have weddings,

all the kind of things that they want to be able to have in the little town.

It's called Cactoblastus Memorial Hall.

And unlike all the other halls that country villages tend to build,

this one was named after an insect, the Cactoblastus moth.

And Cactoblastus, well, it's pretty plain too.

It's a very dull little moth in itself.

It's about just under two centimeters long, head to tails of speak.

Brown, homely, it'd be easy to pass by and think,

non-descript building, named after a non-descript insect.

But there's more to this story.

It's a small hole with a very big story behind it.

The Cactoblastus, it isn't so non-descript after all.

I'm Johanna Mayer, and this is Atlas Obscura,

a celebration in the world strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, we consider Cactoblastus, a humble moth that traveled across the globe

and became the hero of a continent.

After this.

This story begins in colonial Australia in 1788.

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