Treks and the City

Writer Charlotte Ward charts her travels and reveals all about the highs and lows of her new life Down Under. As well as her regular blog on iVillage.co.uk, you can follow Charlotte on Twitter and also catch her at www.charlotteward.net

A close encounter of the creepy crawly kind

By Charlotte Ward on 04 Nov 2011 No comments

For as long as I can remember I’ve had a bit of a phobia of spiders. Although I don’t mind them generally, it’s the thought of one scuttling around my bedroom while I’m asleep that makes my skin crawl.

For years I even suffered recurring nightmares where I’d wake with a jolt imagining a spider dangling from a thread above my head.

As I inevitably tried to flee from the bed, arms and legs flailing, my long-suffering ex-boyfriend developed his own reflex action. His arms would spring up like a Venus flytrap to catch me then he’d pull me down into a bear hug until my panic subsided.

So you’d think moving to Australia, the motherland of some of the world’s most deadly and horrible eight-legged freaks might concern me.

Um no. Living in a fifth floor flat in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney I’ve been naively blasé about the whole spider situation.

'I don’t think you get many in the city,' I even informed a fellow spider-fearing friend. 'There’s nothing to worry about.'

Then on Monday morning I awoke sleepily to spot a blurry outline on the blind above my bed. Reaching for my glasses I was immediately horrified as a huge, tarantula-like horror came into focus - a brown, boggle-eyed, hairy huntsman spider.

There was no way the pint glass and magazine trick was going to trap this beast. I recoiled slowly scared that any sudden movement might cause it to launch on to my face like a scene from the film Alien.

Standing in the door whimpering I called to my English friends Kat and Darren.

'Oh my God, I’ve never seen one that big,' Kat exclaimed before disappearing into her bedroom.

'Oh great,' Darren added. 'So now I’ve got to deal with it.'

So we stood there for another five minutes staring at the spider and completely clueless as to what to do.

'Shall I call David,' I suggested, referring to my new Aussie pal from down the road who, having served in the army for years, would surely know how to deal with this sort of crisis?

'Not on my watch,' Darren announced, suddenly coming over all Alpha male.

'Shall I call my mum?' Kat added, reappearing.

'Are you taking the piss?' Darren replied with high-pitched indignation, throwing both his girlfriend and me a warning look should we dare to emasculate him any more.

Finally, a decision was made and some terrifying vacuum extraction action commenced with a considerable amount of screaming. Afterwards we doused the entire flat with Raid spray and sat shaken on the sofa.

Logging on to Facebook I tried to distract myself by chatting to a new friend about a 2.4km ocean swim we want to do in a few weeks time.

'I heard the shark warning went off there yesterday,' she typed.

Oh dear Lord…