Australia is not for the faint hearted. I always thought that moving to southern Tasmania from Western Australia would reduce the number of creepy crawlies that we’d find in our house. But no, since we’ve been here we’ve seen scorpions, snakes and spiders galore.

 

But since The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and the Harry Potter films I’ve become decidedly uncomfortable around spiders, especially the Huntsman spider shown above. They are on the largish side (the size of the palm of my hand) and it is the way they move that tends to puts the willies up me.

 

Now the little jumping spiders are admittedly not as bad as the huntsman. For one thing they are a lot smaller, less than 1cm long, and while hairy and their tendency to stare right at you can be off putting,  you can in the right frame of mind think of them as cute. The fact that they don’t tend to come into the house also helps.

 

The Enamelled Back Spider is is almost jewel like in appearance and although they tend to build webs only 1metre from our front door they know their place and stay outside.

 

My partner does not like spiders at all so I am often dipatched with a rolled up newspaper or slipper to “deal” with them. As I protest and squirm I am often challenged with the phrase “What are you man or mouse?”. Well all I can say is “Pass the cheese!”.