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In the beginning Brisbane police became familiar with reports of a suspicious looking character accompanied by a small dog lurking at night in swampy paddocks, usually where there were horses. They investigated….

HD ’Doug’ Thorley, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, used to love to tell the story of how, in the course of his research, he was picked up by the police on several occasions and how they listened in disbelief when he explained his activities were in the name of scientific research.

Standing in a swamp in his long pants and white singlet, he had rubbed over his skin different mixtures of an insect repellent he named RID. His obsessive and pedantic nature propelled him to “get it right” and the only way was to stand in the open, from dusk to sometimes until 3am….and just let the mozzies land on him. Meticulously he observed and noted down his findings in small bound notebooks. That was the only way he would know which of his formulae worked. He kept a dog for company, and patting and talking to the local horses helped while away the hours of tedium. This may sound like folk lore but is, in fact, the fair dinkum story behind one of Australia’s great manufacturing successes.

HD ’Doug’ Thorley's RID repellent was based on DEET, a chemical issued to American soldiers in World War II, but it smelled so bad it could not be considered a consumer product. So he set to work, wearing out many of his wife’s stainless steel kitchen mixers searching for a formula to combine DEET with a high quality cosmetic cream. His seemingly insurmountable problem was to stop it separating in the container. One day in desperation he reconfigured his additives and the formula stabilized. He concluded that he must have spent at least 3,000 hours working on the formula and he felt the success that day was due to divine intervention because he had prayed for guidance!

RID was a hit from the day it was launched in 1956 as a personal insect repellent. The great island continent of Australia saw to that. Notwithstanding the harsh Australian climate, Queensland was the country’s premier state for all biting and disease carrying insects. Initially, the company sales doubled each year without any advertising. Over the years, the original glass bottles with the now famous purple label gave way to today’s familiar purple pack. HD ‘Doug’ Thorley chose the original purple colour. Proudly the colour has never changed and the glorious purple pack stands out anywhere, on the grocery or pharmacy shelf.

A casualty of ‘progress’ was the extensive wording on the back of the bottles that HD ‘Doug’ Thorley meticulously laboured over. He stood by his words calling it “truth in advertising”. It included the original statement saying how it was developed over 3000 hours of research by Thorley Industries of Precision Street, Salisbury, Queensland. What of course it did not say was that many of the 3000 hours were spent in swampy horse paddocks researching and noting the behaviour of mosquitoes and fending off the occasional policeman!

RID today is distributed nationally and internationally. It has been Queensland’s number one repellent seller since its launch. As any Aussie will tell you, if asked which insect repellent they use to protect themselves they always say RID! It’s the only one that isn’t greasy, doesn’t stink and it just WORKS! So there you have the story of a great Australian icon - RID.