Spiders in Australia… eek!

[Soontobe60]

My DH is desperate to return to Australia (he spent time there as a teenager) and wants to go to watch the Ashes in a couple of years, combined with a road trip across the south of the country. I love travel, love adventures but loathe spiders!
My question is, is my fear of coming across loads of spiders in Australia justified? Has anyone been and if so, did you come across lots of them, in particular big ones?

@whinetime89

This fluffy darling was in the bathroom last week :/

What the actual fu.... I couldn't go through that door for £10,000 😑

Spent several weeks travelling across Australia- coast and outback.
I loathe spiders and didn’t see any that I recall.
However there is lots of other bothersome “wildlife”. Notably mosquitoes in Kakadu. Billions of them. Also geckoes in queensland. Friendly but unnerving when there’s a whole family on your hotel wall.

Oh and cockroaches too. Urgh.

The scary one is the funnel web, found on Sydney's north shore,

Uhhm, not sure where you live but they are not just on the North Shore. They range a few hours up the coast and down also. I’m not on the North Shore and have them here, also had them at a holiday shack few hours south when I was a child, and a relative on the Central Coast collects them there and takes them to The Reptile Park up there for milking for anti-venom.

OP, yes, we have spiders. I take it you are likely going to be staying in hotel rooms? If so you probably ever won’t see one. If dodgy roadside travel hotels, you may get the odd one but they will likely be harmless, just whack with a thong.

I visited family in Australia for a month and saw less spiders than I normally do in the UK.

One tiny one in the garden and about three when I was camping. None were as big as the ones I get at home.

No one can say whether you’ll see a spider on your trip, but I wouldn’t think you’d be any more likely to spot one there than at home. The main difference is you’ll be having a lovely time on holiday!

@PonyPals

I live in Australia and your fear is real! There are gigantic spiders roaming around and taking over houses. The media do not report this as it would ruin tourism. The spiders are everywhere... you can't even leave your house without stepping on one. They are beginning to enslave people.

Hahaha! You’ve sold me, I’m off to buy my plane ticket 🤣

Love how people's say, leave them alone and they will leave you alone, as if everyone getting hurt by spiders has gone looking for a fight?

Op I am terrified of them and unfortunately after shortly arriving in oz I was trapped in The room with a monster huntsman.

I' also saw a funnel WWeb.(outside)

The huge monster webs across phone masts were remarkable.
What got me through it was the screens everyone has on Windows.

So I felt quite secure with those.
The size of the huntsman really are gob smacking but if I can cope with it, you can.

Just looked up the funnel web spider, and you're right, @HoppingPavlova. They don't confine themselves to northern Sydney; they're even in Tasmania and Queensland!!! When I was growing up in Sydney's eastern suburbs the accepted wisdom was that these beasties didn't cross the harbour, so we were safe to prowl around at liberty and get up to mischief.
Your relative deserves a medal for collecting funnel webs for medical purposes. That is admirable guts.

Yep I dont get why everyone has to joke about drop bears or say "theyre not that bad". I find the huntsman really scary. "Hold a tarnatula" scary. It's so much bigger and hairier than anything we have. Pretty much movie scary. I know it isnt venomous. I am also phobic of slugs..m

I have just googled funnel web spiders. Why did I do that 🤦🏼‍♀️.

@FromEden

I only saw spiders on 2 occasions when in Australia for a year. A huntsman that came in the window of our apartment in Sydney and in the rainforest there were big ones, but outside where they lived in the trees and caught birds in their webs 😳 So yeah, they looked big and scary but were harmless to humans and mostly avoidable.

They "caught birds in their webs"?!? WTF?!? That IS like something out of a horror film!

Sorry OP, I'm an arachnophobe too, so I'm unsure I could cope with that trip. OTOH, the rest if the wildlife down there is fantastic - koalas, possums, kangaroos... so maybe go with your DH, but let him do the road trip alone, while you stay in a top floor room in a decent hotel, which will probably be a spider free zone.

Although this whole thread is designed to reassure (or amuse)(i had to google drop bears) it's resulted in me being completely convinced that i won't be visiting Aus. I just couldn't cope.

Give me all the snakes, cockroaches and lizards you like - but one glimpse of a huntsman on a wall and i'd be a gibbering wreck. I'd be running screaming back to the airport

But a Huntsman would never hurt anyone, they are completely harmless. It’s not the big ones you need to worry about.

@HoppingPavlova that's not how phobias work. People are scared of holes and buttons and fish and all sorts of things. Many of them inanimate. The harm isn't in their potential venom, it's in being in their presence, no more and no less.

The very definition of a phobia is that it's irrational.

I would NEVER go to Aus because of spiders.

Never. I would die if I saw a huntsman

I did a year there and seem one massive huntsman in that time and that's whilst I was farming in Northern Territory which I doubt you will be doing. You'll be fine the spider thing is a massive over exaggeration

@HoppingPavlova

But a Huntsman would never hurt anyone, they are completely harmless. It’s not the big ones you need to worry about.

I believe it when you say they wouldn't hurt me. I know i need to worry more about the little ones. (i would worry about them as well!) It's not a logical fear. It's not about will they hurt me or not.

I've dived in shark infested waters (seen the shadows of the sharks in the distance - it was a thrill). I can deal with big aggressive dogs. I've stood in front of a bolting horse and caught it. But when i even mentally picture a big spider being anywhere near me i feel as if cold water is pouring right down my body. I feel physically sick. I feel the flight response well up. Just thinking about it this is.

I know if i saw one that big in a room with me i would totally freak out. (I've turned a pub table over to escape from a spider coming down towards my head in the uk). Embarrassing and unpleasant for everyone. If i saw a huntsman i would spend the rest of the trip in a mild state of panic. I probably wouldn't be able to sleep.

I know it's a lighthearted thread, and i don't mind trying to explain - it must seem bloody silly if you don't have a phobia because there's no logic to it. But it's so strong.

I spent a year backpacking round Oz 25 years ago working both rural and city jobs. Victoria was the worst place for spiders but then we were fruit picking mainly and actually the flies bothered me more. Huntsmans are big but you know they’re harmless so they are horrible but not too scary. It’s the little beggars like the red backs that are scary because you don’t really see them but they can kill you if you move a log pile and disturb them. All in all though in a year I probably had half a dozen spider incidents and I’d go back again in a heartbeat.

I have been to Oz 5 times. I have seen one small snake (in the rainforest) and not a single spider bigger than I have in my garden shed.

I’ve been 3 times...what used to freak me out was my relatives used to hose all the outside garden furniture and up in the corners of the alfresco roof to flush out any potential spiders😳 ..... I saw a red back once at a family bbq

[quote ShowOfHands]@HoppingPavlova that's not how phobias work. People are scared of holes and buttons and fish and all sorts of things. Many of them inanimate. The harm isn't in their potential venom, it's in being in their presence, no more and no less.

The very definition of a phobia is that it's irrational.[/quote]
I agree that this isn't how phobia's work. But there's such a thing as desensitization.

I say this b/c I live here and have had to call for help SO many times, when seeing a huntsman and wait for someone to come do the magazine & tupperware container trick.

EVENTUALLY, slowly... I was able to do it myself. The catalyst was seeing a good-sized one moving down the wall towards my 6 m/o. Fear almost forgotten.

But of course, that's no use if you're here for a quick visit. Just stay in hotels, you'll never see any!

I looked after a child who was scared of spiders (learned from her Mum) and over time, got her interested in webs and spider behaviours (we lived on a farm, LOTS of spiders) and she managed to eradicate the fear through incidental yet controlled exposure so there is some merit in desensitization. Pointing out a huntsman is harmless to somebody slap bang in the grip of a phobia is like shovelling snow in a blizzard however.

Meant to say well done DustyBlue! Not easy to conquer.

I have emetophobia and caring for an ill child was a real turning point for me. I'll never get there fully but there's something pretty powerful in the parenting instinct.

I was spider phobic but I pretended I wasn't scared when I had children. I am not spider phobic at all now. We went to Australia for a 3 week holiday. We did the usual tourist route from Darwin to Alice Springs. We walked in the outback every day and stayed in motels.Didn't see any large spiders and only saw one snake. A brown one disappearing into the Bush. I was scared of the crocodiles and kept an eye out for them. Loved that holiday.

I’m surprised there isn’t a market for professional spider catchers!

I have thought this before

(you say it’s the size that bothers you. A tiny red back will do a lot more damage than a large huntsman. So there is NO logic there)?

A phobia is not about logic. It's an irrational fear.