meljackson2002

My husband would like us and our children to move into Oz. I've been looking into life in Australia etc and was up for it until I looked into the spiders!! Bloody hell.... I don't love spiders, I'm ok with the UK smaller ones and since I've had children I can remove the large spiders with a glass. We do get large spiders in our house as it's an old house with lots of trees. After looking into spiders in Australia I honestly do not think I could cope with a huntsman in the house - there massive, never mind the other type of spiders. I never thought I had a serious phobia until I started looking into them - please don't send me photos - I honestly can't look at them. So my question is did anyone not move because of the spiders??? My husband thinks I'm nuts say no because of the spiders...

quoll

Huntsmen don’t hurt you, it’s the redbacks, funnelwebs and whitetails you want to watch out for, although there haven’t been too many spider deaths since the antivenoms got developed.

If you have a real phobia either get yourself desensitised or don’t go, simples. Spiders are pretty ubiquitous, more in bushy type places but it’d be a rare place that doesn’t have reasonably regular visitors. How are you with cockroaches?

My DH suggested I get my fly phobia seen to before we moved to Aus and, had I chosen a less crackpot shrink to work on it with me, I might well have done but as it was I just had to live with the little buggers. At least the spiders eat the flies.

M0zza

We had one huntsman in the house in five years, it ignored us up on the ceiling and we ignored it and after a day or two it wandered off. I saw no more spiders in Australia than in UK. If you can remove one now, then I would presume you do not have a serious phobia, so I really would not worry about it.

thistlehollyberry

Would vacuuming them work?

Beoz

Just get pest control in every year to do a spray. Simple. No spiders, cockroaches, and the like.

meljackson2002

Do you get the other types of spiders in the house? I couldn't get beyond the huntsman, I can't look it up as the images freak me out! I might try the hypnosis route. I've no problems with cockroaches, they don't scare me, just annoying.

meljackson2002

I couldn't ignore it, I wouldn't sleep!!

meljackson2002

Oh I do that here (in UK), problem is empting the vacuum.....

meljackson2002

On average how much does this cost?

scrubbedexpat098

There's no point in telling you they're harmless etc because they're big, fast and scary looking. I can't stand em, but you do get used to them.

I had one land on my arm off the sun visor in my ute, I fair shat myself but I'm still here. Don't let a mild phobia of spiders be the reason you don't come, there's bigger and deadlier things here

quoll

White tails, yes reasonably often but we were in the bush capital, ditto with huntsmen we got them regularly. Redbacks don’t come inside too much but if you’ve got a wood stove and keep your wood outside then you do need to bang it to knock passengers off before you bring it inside. Funnel webs, more endemic to Sydney, never encountered one in Canberra. If you’re in the habit of keeping shoes/clothing on the verandah or out in the garage like your wellies, gardening gloves etc, then you need to be vigilant about whether something might have crawled inside.

They’re going to be less of an issue in a central metropolitan area than they are in some far flung suburb.

Sure, you can hoover them up if you want but then you need to shove something in the nozzle as they can climb out before you can find someone to empty the hoover. I’m not a great fan of the pest control sprays, especially with kids around. If it kills insects what on Earth is it doing to you?

Don’t go up to PNG, they’re even bigger there.

NickyC

I think the population of Australia is almost 25 million nowadays. Hardly any of those 25 million people would actually LIKE spiders yet most of them manage to live and work here and live happy lives. Spiders are not a big deal.

I'm in the coastal suburbs of Sydney. Lived here for nearly 40 years. We get around one huntsman a year in the house. I've never seen a funnel web. No-one I know has ever seen a funnel-web. Never seen a white-tail and I can count the number of red-backs I've seen in 40 years on two hands. They live outside, anyway. Like most people, I don't particularly like spiders but they truly are a non-issue.

Cockroaches are a different matter. They are everywhere around here. Cannot avoid them.. We get our place professionally sprayed every couple of years - costs around $200? (I think) - but that's to keep the cockroaches away.

Edited to add - our last pest spray cost $269. Lasts a year, in theory but we do it every two years or so.

the troubadour

I certainly wouldn't use pest control in the house without dire need to justify the use of some rather strong chemicals.


I have never found spiders a problem and have lived in Country WA. Cannot say I like them. but the main spider found indoors in my experience, is the Daddy Long Legs.
Which is easily disposed off if one is so wanting.


Other spiders have mainly observed in outdoor sheds or outside the house. I have had to dispose of a number of red back spiders on an occasion that decided to colonise an area where stupidly left sheets of tin stacked for a period.

ozzieeagle

Spiders are definitely the most overrated fear factor re Australia.

Snakes a different issue, simply because they don't exist as such in the UK.

The Aussie factor people should be fearing is the Sun. Try explaining that to a potential migrant.

Flys will definitely be the most aggravating thing about Australia.... almost a non-issue in the UK, but they can ruin picnics and the great outdoors on many occasions and make working outside torturous.

M0zza

I only found flies annoying in Western Australia, rarely saw them in Sydney, in fact I almost forgot about them and then I came back to the UK and remembered how annoying they are in summer.

I probably could not live in Western Australia because of the flies though, when we were on holiday there we found we were totally covered in them within a few minutes of getting out of the car.