Bush Flies

Visitors to King's Canyon not enjoying a rest stop.

No! Flies on me!: Bush Flies are endemic in the Red Centre [Alice Springs, Uluru, The Olgas, Kings Canyon etc] as they breed in cow poo and the area is surrounded by cattle stations. The flies drive tourists crazy for much of the year and beating at them with a hand is not a solution, the little bug***s are suicidally desperate for liquid rich in protein and minerals and humans are the best source, whether it's sweat or eyeball secretion.
Better to pick up a bit of broken eucalyptus and use it as a whisk, but this is not allowed in national parks as rangers assume that if every visitor wanted an anti-fly branch soon the nearby trees would be stripped bare. True.

The best solution, though totally naff, unfashionable and not exactly comfortable, is a bag over the head, or more precisely, an elasticated nylon net. Sometimes this may come built into a hat, or with a little cloth bit at the top, but the selection in the Red Centre is poor, so try to buy beforehand. Cairns has a particularly good selection. $10 well spent, believe it.
The clichéd Australian hats with dangling corks don't work very well as once you stop moving, so do the corks, and bang goes your defensive system.

p.s. The other kind of Australia fly, the Blow Fly, is bigger, slower than the Bush Fly and doesn't bother humans at all. The reason? It breeds in dead flesh, absorbing quite enough protein in the process, so it doesn't need the paltry amount it could collect from sucking a human.

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