If you’ve been to Australia, how often did you see spiders?

[feelingstifled]

Hi all. Going to Australia for the first time this year. I hate spiders, so I’m slightly panicking at the thought of encountering lots of big ones. So if you’ve been there, how often do you think we will be coming across them? Thanks !

How do you propose she asks the "millions of people who live there"? Commission a poll? Find an Australian equivalent of Mumsnet and set up an account just to ask one simple question?

She could have changed her title to "If you've been to OR LIVED IN Australia ..." to be fully inclusive, but everyone knows what she meant (apart from you).

Not one.
but in Queensland there are loads of geckos etc in hotel rooms and on one occasion, an enormous cockroach

There's a topic on MN that can be used for this:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/aussie-nz-mumsnetters

Exactly! Ask for people who lived there or post in the Australian section of Mumsnet

I know levels of literacy are decreasing but who thinks have you lben to means the same as do you live in?

If someone who went for a visit says they saw 1000 spiders and someone who has lived their whole life there and has never seen one which one does she go with?

She's worried anyway, why not reduce the worry by getting the most reliable info

Were going to have to agree to differ on scientific methodology😁

Never, but the cockroaches were the size of rats!

I went to the rainforest and I saw too many. It freaked me out. Stay in cities , desserts you're be fine!

Are you Australian? Do you have an answer for the OP? Or are you just trolling her for fun?

I was severely arachnophobic when I moved to Sydney, 15 years later I just pop a bowl over a huntsman and usher him outside on the incredibly rare occasion I see one if I need to (though I would ask DH to do it if he was around) and wander round my garden barefoot even though we are in prime funnelweb territory. I’m more afraid of cancer than I am of spiders! I still don’t leave shoes outside though 😁 You are very unlikely to encounter spiders as a tourist unless you are going bush. Come and enjoy your holiday.

I am not in Australia, but also SH and I think there seem to be less spiders now.

We do get rain spiders (huntsman) every now and then, but they do more good than harm as they eat mozzies and other bugs, so one in my room wouldn't bother me. I did have a jumping spider on the bed one morning next to me, but it was years back. We get sac spiders more when its very dry, they come to look for liquids, ie your glass of water next to the bed. But they also seem to be much fewer now.

If going into bushland, there is more chance of seeing snakes and frogs, but the biggest thing to the most concerned about imo, are ticks.

Maybe its the environment I live in, but I don't understand the massive fear of spiders I see here all the time. (talk of burning down the house and all this nonsense) They are more scared of you, and will just do what they need to escape being swatted or harmed. A spider is not going to see you walking past and go and attack you. Its very much the opposite.

My son has a spider phobia and went to Sydney and Melbourne last summer and never saw one- much to his relief

Oh dear, poor wee fellow!

There used to be one living on my gate in Queensland. I'm not given to thinking of spiders as cute, but this little one was - it had an emerald green patch on its back. No idea which species it was.

I’ve responded to the OP and I live in Australia. Same as a number of other posters on this thread. 🙄

OP, I’d like to confirm something at least two other people have said - I also saw more spiders in the UK than Australia.

One of my closest friends is Australian and this came up in conversation recently. She said she's only ever seen two huntsmen in the 25 years she lived there until she emigrated to the UK. They're huge but harmless and on the whole most people just ignore them.

I hate spiders too but from what I can gather it's not something you see very often.

I've visited Australia a number of times & I can't recall ever catching so much as a glimpse of a spider (and I would remember if I did because I too am an arachnophobe). However I usually stayed in modern city centre hotels where you're unlikely to come across them.

My only scary Australian wildlife encounter was when I went off the beaten track & was staying in an old, rather run down place in a rural area of the Northern Territory. Awoke in the night to go to the loo & in my half asleep state couldn't understand why the walls of my room, which were white when I went to bed, had turned black. And seemed to be moving.....

When I turned on the light I found I was surrounded by an army of massive black cockroaches - dozens of the things. My horrified screams could have woken the dead!

@echt there was a death from a Redback in 2016. I am from Syd but live in UK. On my regular visits I had a scorpion in my kitchen, snakes in my garden and have had plenty of huntsman’s, and one funnel web sighting.

I was told by someone that loved I'm Aus for most of his childhood, they had a dinner plate sized spider that they accepted as part of the furniture.
It would stay in the same place on the wall all day, but he used to wake up with it in his bed at night. It liked the warmth of people...decision to never go to Aus made.

I'm surprised at some of these answers. I'm in Sydney and regularly get/see spiders. We get at least a huntsman a week in the house, and last year an egg sac hatched and we had hundreds of babies one day! Also regularly see massive webs and orb spiders etc when walking suburban streets. None of them bother me though (aside from all the babies...the Mortein came out on that day)

Yeah, sure, we have spiders, lots of spiders, but to make out we are infested with dinner plate sized ones everywhere in our homes and you can’t move for them being everywhere including your bed is so ridiculous.

In several decades I have only ever had a bird eating spider in the house once. Sure, plenty of huntsmen, and the odd funnel web, and of course the obligatory red-backs when I was a kid and we still had outdoor dunnies in some places, and lots of big orbs the further north you go, but can’t get into bed due to the dinner plate spiders I’d have to clear out first🤣. Also, to clarify, I’ve never been attacked by sharks jumping out of puddles, or had to fight my way through masses of snakes just to get to work (in a city). Have seen lots of snakes though.

There’s just so much hysteria.

Saw one big one in friends’ bathroom in Sydney. None whatsoever in Melbourne, Hunter Valley or other rural areas.

I lived there for a year. Saw quite a few huntsman spiders in houses but not much bigger or scarier than house spiders in the UK. Once saw a redback spider in Sydney at a bus stop. They are small but poisonous (although there have been no deaths from them since an antivenom was developed)

Most days - in my garden. But if one I don't want comes in, I will stick a glass over it and take it out. If it's a useful house spider that eats other bugs, I leave it alone.

Only in the rainforest and I’ve been about five times.

Its not the big ones that should scare you. Small ones can be much more deadly. We lived in Aus for 4 years. Only had a red back in the corner of our pool once. Never saw any really big ones. We lived near a city though, not in the middle of nowhere.

Look out for White Tails, Huntsman’s, Red Backs, Funnel Webs,

I spent a year there. In Sydney I saw none. In places like Northern Queensland I saw quite a lot and they were very large but usually huntsmen so not venomous. Had one in my bedroom and saw lots on big webs between trees near where I worked in the Northern Beaches above Cairns. Saw quite a lot of snakes. I was most scared of the crocodiles in Northern Queensland though!