Spiders and snakes
21 August 2006 by danielbowenSpiders scare the bejeezers out of me. Just how common and how big are spiders in Australia? — James, probably UK
Despite the fears (particularly among the English, it seems) of Australia being overrun with gigantic spiders, snakes and other such deadly creatures, they’re not actually that common. At least, not in plague proportions or anything.
In urban areas, snakes are pretty rare. You’d almost certainly have to go looking hard to find any, and if you’re foolish enough to stomping about in long grass with no foot or leg protection, then you might get into some trouble.
Spiders are less rare, but most of the really scary big ones (eg huntsman) are relatively harmless, at least physically. (I’m not going to argue that psychologically they might scare the crap out of you… they certainly have that affect on me.) The few dangerous spiders tend to be the smaller ones such as the redback and the Sydney funnelweb.
A survey by the ABS showed a mere 1.2% of the population noted bite or sting in the previous four weeks. The figures included bites from snakes, spiders, dogs, but not insects such as mosquitos. It doesn’t comment on whether bites from small children or other humans were included.
Under 15% of those bitten resulted in poisoning.
While it always pays to be aware of your surroundings, and not to place yourself in danger of bites from snakes or spiders or man-eating tigers, none of them are common, and shouldn’t hold you back having a good time visiting. And carry a big stick if it makes you feel safer.
PS. Spiders scare the bejeezers out of me too.
August 22nd, 2006 at 9:54 pm
I’ve got a few stories about snakes and spiders.
A couple of years ago I was bitten by a snake. In suburbia, in my front yard, while moving my sprinkler.
I grew up in the outback, and I don’t get bitten till I move into the city. It was too dark to identify it, there was no poison detected at the site, but it was probably a tree snake. But protocol said they had to keep my in the IC unit over night sticking me with needles every few hours. Did you know that if you hold your breath in the IC unit, alarms go off on the machines hooked up to you?
I’m back out of town now.
Last week I was I stood up from putting my shoes on and my wife said, “Don’t move! You’ve got a spider on your back”. So I did what any person would do, started to dance around trying to slap my back. “Stop it!”, she screamed, “It’s really big!” So now I’m standing there and she creeps up on me with a tea towel and makes these shooing motions at my back. This bloody great huntsman comes charging over my shoulder and dives down the front of my shirt.
Great. Not only have I seen how how big it is, but I can feel how big it is in all it’s hairyness on my chest.
So I did what any man would do. Started grappling at my shirt and screaming like a little girl. My wife joins in trying to pull my shirt off, but the damn thing is tucked in tight. So we both start fumbling around trying to undo my belt and jeans, while this bloody great ball of hair, fangs and legs does laps around my middle.
My wife manages to rip my shirt off throws it onto the front lawn, where surprisingly it doesn’t run off into bush.
So yes, they are not poisoness, but that still didn’t stop me from dancing half naked all over my shirt.
October 20th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Firstly, Craig, my sympathies!
Ive also done the “Huntsman Shuffle” but with a wood spider big enough to wrap itself around my arm so it took 3 or 4 attempts to sweep her off…
After a recent visit from UK friends I’ve decided that all Brits are arachnaphoes. For the month that they were here the only wildlife incident was a young lady who had a redback in her ensuite… and promptly panicked, ran from the room, missed the doorway, got knocked unconsious for a few seconds and woke up face to face with the redback…
The moral of the story for our brit (or any other arachnophobic) visitors is this: They really are more scared of you than you are of them. Leave them alone and they’ll generally leave you alone. And finally a bit of advice – if its big brown and hairy, its generally harmless… if its small and black, its more likely to be a real nasty bugger. I’d rather be bitten by a bird eating spider than than funnel web!
October 28th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Heavy weapons don’t help. A few years back I was camped out in the scrub and needing some firewood. I took my mighty chainsaw to a nearby dead casuarina tree, fired it up and started cutting. Out from under the tree bark scurried a host of very large, very hairy huntsman spiders, climbing all over the chainsaw.. Now, I know they’re bloody harmless, but by the time the chainsaw hit the ground 20 metres away, still running, I reckon I was 50 metres away in the opposite direction and doing the “huntsman shuffle”.
December 2nd, 2006 at 10:24 am
Hi to everyone. I spent 25 years in the Australian Army and during that time spent a hell of a lot of time in the bush. (Probably 3 to 4 moths of every year spent in the bush)
In all that time I have had only 5 encounters with snakes. 4 were common Carpet Snakes or pythons comming to say hello at night time, and one King Brown that attempted to injure my landrover by throwing itself under the tyres at 100kph.
Spiders are a different story. Huntsman look very nasty but the biggest I ever felt was a Bird Eating spider that crawled over my face while I was sneaking around in the rain forrest near Cairns at night. OK so i walked into his/her web and it was entirely my fault so i can’t blame anyone else but the bloody thing was as large as a dinner plate.
It wasn’t entirely unpleasant but having both of ones ears massaged while its belly slides over your nose could make some people feel just a tad uncomfortable. Yes I was wearing insect repellent at the time and no it didn’t deter the wee beasty in any manner. Contray to popular belief they are quite soft and the hairy legs tickled a bit and he/she walked off uninjured and so I was happy when it left.
December 4th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Hmmmmm. Having grew up in NZ and spent the last 11 years in the UK, I came to this site in search of some reassurance.
Figuring knowlege is power – surely research into the nasty beasties that hang out here will help me deal and ultimately cope with ‘the fear’, Particularly because my partner (is it not enough that he dragged me all the way to Melbourne? Must we go further into the depths??) wants to take me ‘camping’ between christmas and new year.
What can I say chaps ‘arrrrrgggh. I’m a celebrity get me out of here!’
hmm. more research required I think.
Sincerely
‘Practically a whingeing pom’
February 12th, 2007 at 1:12 am
Hiya guys,
My name is Donna and I am from Ireland. I am coming over to Australia (SYDNEY)with my mates in august for a yr just as an experience and a bit of travelling while im young and able to do it. The only thing is that (yes youv guessed it) Iv a terrible fear of spiders, and I mean terrible. Baby spiders freak the hell out of me over here in ireland so I can only imagine what I would be like if I seen a huntsman…….I really dont know what to do, because this phobia has a big impact on whether I will I go or not? My worst fear is when I am asleep at night….all alone and I see a spider beside me on my bed and then he jumps onto me! I know its crazy, but the image just scares me so much!!!!!!!!! Please help!
April 18th, 2007 at 7:46 am
I am a Brit who lived in Oz around 15 years ago and I have to say I never saw any snakes during my 2 year stay there. I did see many spiders though. Garry Myers is dead right that we Brits are terrified of spiders…. but its because we don’t have many big ones and none that are potentially dangerous to people. The biggest spider I have ever seen was in my flat in Paddignton (Sydney)… I have no idea whether it was poisonous or not but it looked pretty fierce and was very confident: it walked towards me and wouldn’t be put off by my arm flapping!!!
August 5th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
All u people are sissys i live in oz and i love poisonions animals i got a very big bird eating spider and a desert Scorpion living in my bed room and im only 14.
March 30th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Hi, my brother is now a resident in oz with a beautiful wife and 2 gorgeous girls! i visit evey yr from the uk and its safe to say i have to go looking for snakes and spiders and if thats not bad enough, i take a big stick to poke them with!!! My brother is well over 6 foot tall and built like a house end (that means huge), he just moved out to laidley, sorting the garden he came across a scorpion-he jumped in the air so high he looked like a plane-big softy!!!
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:35 am
my mate peter jones got bit by 2 yaipan snakes on the outskirts of brisbane the other day and was rushed 2 brisbane hospital but he lived and they are ment 2 be the most dangerous things in the world he is scared of things now tho so please ring him and say they are ok his number is 07835938226
January 12th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
My husband really wants to move to Australia but even the thought of it scares the crap out of me! Australia looks like such a beautiful place with many more oppurtunities for the kids than the UK so i thought id do abit of research..
Do BIG spiders liove in homes? How likely is it that i will come across 1?
Kerry x
March 20th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Kerry,
It really depends where you live, but like everyone else has said, we have BIG huntsmen. My Mum and Dad live on the outskirts of Brisbane and they have huntsmen living in their house that have a legspan a bit less than a dinner plate – they are gigantic!! But I am absolutely terrified, and I mean terrified, of spiders but I don’t let it put me off too much. Especially because most of the time you don’t even know they are there.
One time, I walked into the toilet and as I shut the door, a big huntsman ran around the other side of the door, so that I knew when I opened the door again it would be right next to me. So I called out to my Dad but he didn’t hear me. My brother did though, and tried to shoo it back through the door. He thought it was HILARIOUS but there I was, standing on top of the toilet seat, screaming out to my Dad while my brother was in absolute hysterics. Little bugger!
April 28th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hi you guys.
We are moving to Perth from UK. I am really looking far award to living in in this beaultiful country!
BUT we have 3 year old twins and I am really worried about spiders in Perth?
Should I be worried?
Thanks
Amanda
August 18th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
i have lived in australia my whole life. I live in the country right near a forest. I see alot of snakes and spiders, especially in summer. But very rarly will you find one that will just bite you. They are more scared of you then you are of them. If your gentle and clam with them you will be fine, you just have to watch out so you dont accidentally step on one!
I have had snakes slither over my bare feet in summer, it gave me a scare but i stood still. They only attack out of fear. If you give them nothing to fear you will be fine. The spiders Arnt to bad in Perth but its a good idea to keep an eye out anyway.
November 26th, 2009 at 12:47 am
I have moved to a new house that is located in a more suburban area than what I use to live in, Skye Melbourne. Here is the thing but… I get more huntsman now than I ever had when living near the bush. The only thing I can put it down to is that there is a pine tree that has branches close by my roof. Now the bad thing is about Huntsman, that I am sure a lot of people can attest to is that they like to come out at night, are sometimes as large as a dinner plate and can do a sorta parachuting jump maneuver.
So anyway, I has this outside building that is an office of sorts, every time I got out there at night there is another one of them sitting on wall / roof. Summer is the worst time. In 1 month I have personally taken good care of 3 of the buggers and there is another one there now.
So why do I fret!? Well, a couple of years back I nearly had a head-on collision with another car. I was driving my kingswood down a busy suburban road when…… you guessed it… a huntsman f*cking spider ran out from behind a sun-visor, onto the windscreen and towards the steering wheel and it was f*cking massive. You could pass this one off as a cat with 8 legs. So anyways, when there is less than 1/2 an inch between your stomach and the steering wheel, the immediate envisioned, hard-to-see-it-in-a-positive-way kind of event of the approaching creature turned to a fear reaction.
The Kingswood swerved across two lanes of traffic, the front wheel mounted the pavement. The animal creature was out of site at this stage, but the vision of it was still firmly imprinted on my brain. I leaped out of the car doing the spider dance in a hysterical state for about 3 minutes, after approaching the car I could not find it! It was gone! Gone?….. gone where? Where had it gone, it can’t just go, it must remain…. it must still exist somewhere in some state, it can’t have just opened a small rift in the space-time continuum and removed it’s physical presence from the vehicle. Anyways, this car was full of muck, it had old Macca bags and cloths just scattered all over it. I systematically removed every article of clothing and rubbish from the vehicle using a stick. It took well over 30 minutes to pile every article that was in the Kingswood onto the pavement.
When I had finished removing everything, there was still no sign of it at all. Then I went about disturbing around under the dashboard and the seats with the stick. I persisted in doing this for 30 minutes with no sign of it all. I then almost gave up, ready to walk away from my car for the day when it came out of hiding from in the windshield demister vent. This vent is not THAT wide, but somehow the spider had squeezed its fat arse body into and the out of that vent. Anyway, I went to take care of it with the stick but only succeeded in dislodging one of its hairly legs before the bugger squeezed itself back into the demister vent. I tried to take care of it with the stick but, I wasn’t sure how successful I had been. I then decided to push articles of clothing into the vent, along with macca bags. I drove the car to a service station, bought a role of thick gaffer-tape, and a can of insecticide. I emptied the entire can into the vent, and taped over the entire vent with the gaffer-tape.
So a month or so later, when I put the fan on, there was a fairly unique tinkering sound emanating from the vent… then out flew individual huntsman legs from the dead spider, dried out and fluttering out.
This incident is not unique, because since then another couple of huntsman have appeared in my car (leaving window open accidentally at night etc). However, the last couple of times I have stayed focused and acted calmly.
As a post-script, the huntsman on the back thing seems to a recurring theme. A guy in a supermarket had one on the back of white shirt, and he was unaware of it. My wife told him about it as she walked past. He just seemed to nod agreement, but he did not understand the statement “There is f*cking huge spider on your back”. So regardless, he kept walking. The spider then climbed over his shoulder and he was doing the spider dance in aisle 8… Don’t know what happened to the spider, I guess maybe the next lucky shopper maybe.