....you can't go back.
But let me start since the beginning.
Many years ago I was meant to come to Australia with a friend of mines, who also loves to travel.
Her idea was to travel the country by bus, a sort of a hop-on hop-off kind of tour, for at least 4 weeks.
We were going to uni back then and holidays were not so much a problem of time as they were a problem of money.
We looked into it and we saw that if we lived like Ghandi for a whole year we could have afforded the flights and then once there we would have managed.
I have to say the idea was exciting, we had never been that far and it would have represented a big leap for the both of us.
But then we didn't go. And one of the main reasons was that one night my friend watched a doco about spiders in Australia. That did it for her.
She is absolutely terrified by spiders. She is so scared that no matter where she goes she always finds them.
She finds them in the most remote places, places where no human would normally look into, but for her it's like she hears them calling.
Imagine a teeny tiny spider, the size of an ant (and not an army ant either, just a baby ant... or is there such a thing as a baby ant? well, anyway, you get the picture), hidden in the most remote corner of the most secluded room of a house where you go on vacation for not more than 4 days in a year (when you don't even bother to unpack because by the time you'll be finished you'd have to go again).
Well, she finds it.
She doesn't look for it.
She just finds it, one second she's opening the door and putting down the suitcase, the second after she's pointing at the teeny tiny thing asking me to get rid of it.
When I travel with her I don't have to worry about checking out the places we go to, 'cause if there's a spider she'll find it right away.
It's a bit like travelling through the jungle with the famous "sweet-blood" friend everyone has that gets all the mozzie bites so that you don't get bitten.
Anyway, she watched this doco on spiders, where they were showing how common venomous spiders are in Australia, and that they can be found anywhere, especially in summer and that you cannot expect not to see a spider when you get there unless you walk around blindfolded.
Ok granted they were a bit exaggerating, I remember that they showed a mortal Red-back hanging from the pergola of a house in a suburban area. There was a housewife just below the web acting as if she couldn't see the spider. I found it not very plausible since she had at least to notice the big camera pointing at her and the strobe light just a few inches above her head, but I think the whole point was to show that these kind of spiders are so common that Australians are known to live their lives as if they didn't worry about living in the most dangerous country in the world (talking about snakes and spiders and other venomous and potentially mortal creatures).
Years afterwards, when confronted with the possibility of following Steve into his home country I thought the worst thing that could happen related to spiders was that my friend would have never come to visit (and truth be told she hasn't so far, although for different reasons, even though I figure the moment she'd step into this country she would spot a spider on the airport tarmac).
When interrogated on the subject an exasperated Steve said:" There ARE no spiders, there ARE no spiders, in my whole life I might have seen a dozen Funnel-web spiders.... tops!" You see, that's the thing that scares me the most, the fact that he felt like he had to add "tops" at the end of that already illogical sentence.
But feelings proved to be stronger than fears and three years on here I am, and the only spiders I have seen are the ones at the zoo or at the museum of natural history.
Up until today that is.
Yes, because this afternoon I was playing with my cats in the backyard, or rather trying to make the look of boredom in their eyes a little less permanent by entertaining them with a string.
When I saw the top part of of their scratch-post capsized on the garden.
I took it and put it back straight down.
And then I noticed a spider running for cover on the top of it.
It looked slightly bigger than the average garden spider so I looked closely and I immediately knew I was in front of a Red-back. How? Er... it's a got a red stripe on its back.
There you have it. I cannot pretend I live in a safe place anymore.
Until today I could laugh nervously at the stories I hear from time to time about people finding spiders and snakes in their gardens, thinking "this won't happen to you, you're safe, your place doesn't have any spiders, they just live in your neighbours' places but as soon as they get close to yours there's a magical spell that pushes them gently away and they know they cannot get in.".
ahahah, did I mention the nervous laughter?
Well, no going back now, I saw it.
As a matter of fact I even took pictures of it.
And in order to do that I had to get quite close, even closer that what Steve would have wanted me to, since on the phone he said he would have dealt with it when he'd got back home but he told me not to get too close.
The fact is that this thing is very small.
Seriously, MUCH smaller than our poor italian perfectly harmless garden spiders.
And they're kind of cute too.
They are black and their abdomen is rather swollen with a bright red stripe on it.
The whole thing is not bigger than my thumb.
See, that's how they get you, you don't take them seriously and when they bite you you think it's a minor bite and don't even pay attention to it.
But it can be fatal!
I've done my research, on internet and on a book I bought about venomous creatures of Australia and it says that sometimes the venom can take days to take its course but that in severe cases it can provoke paralysis and even death!
The good news is they created an anti-venom and that you have plenty of time to go to a hospital before you can be considered in danger.
Still.
You see, being italian means you grow up with a lot of things in your garden, but as gross as they can sometimes be they will never kill you.
The closest you can go is the viper in the mountains and god knows I've seen my share of those when I was trekking, but we were told how to deal with them and I've learnt to fear and respect snakes. That's why I wasn't so shocked when I found a Red-belly Black Snake just outside my window watching my tv (I asked him if he wanted me to change channel and then I took a photo of him, what is it with me and taking photos anyway??? can't I just run like every sane human being would do?).
Anyway, what I mean is that for me to feel that something can kill me it has to be at least as big as my hand.... like the killer spiders in the movies, you know, BIG! Not that I ever want to see one that big, for goodness' sake, if the internet tells me that a spider as big as my thumb can kill me that's more than enough to keep me away... after a photo shoot of course.
Well, after checking that my cats couldn't get close to it I just gave up and got inside to write this, waiting for Steve to come home, and then I will have something else to worry about since like every Australian I know, Steve is fully aware of the dangers represented by these venomous creatures but he still goes around bare footed and he will probably not want to kill it but gently pick it up and put into our neighbours' gardens... "There ARE no spiders, there ARE no spiders...".
But let me start since the beginning.
Many years ago I was meant to come to Australia with a friend of mines, who also loves to travel.
Her idea was to travel the country by bus, a sort of a hop-on hop-off kind of tour, for at least 4 weeks.
We were going to uni back then and holidays were not so much a problem of time as they were a problem of money.
We looked into it and we saw that if we lived like Ghandi for a whole year we could have afforded the flights and then once there we would have managed.
I have to say the idea was exciting, we had never been that far and it would have represented a big leap for the both of us.
But then we didn't go. And one of the main reasons was that one night my friend watched a doco about spiders in Australia. That did it for her.
She is absolutely terrified by spiders. She is so scared that no matter where she goes she always finds them.
She finds them in the most remote places, places where no human would normally look into, but for her it's like she hears them calling.
Imagine a teeny tiny spider, the size of an ant (and not an army ant either, just a baby ant... or is there such a thing as a baby ant? well, anyway, you get the picture), hidden in the most remote corner of the most secluded room of a house where you go on vacation for not more than 4 days in a year (when you don't even bother to unpack because by the time you'll be finished you'd have to go again).
Well, she finds it.
She doesn't look for it.
She just finds it, one second she's opening the door and putting down the suitcase, the second after she's pointing at the teeny tiny thing asking me to get rid of it.
When I travel with her I don't have to worry about checking out the places we go to, 'cause if there's a spider she'll find it right away.
It's a bit like travelling through the jungle with the famous "sweet-blood" friend everyone has that gets all the mozzie bites so that you don't get bitten.
Anyway, she watched this doco on spiders, where they were showing how common venomous spiders are in Australia, and that they can be found anywhere, especially in summer and that you cannot expect not to see a spider when you get there unless you walk around blindfolded.
Ok granted they were a bit exaggerating, I remember that they showed a mortal Red-back hanging from the pergola of a house in a suburban area. There was a housewife just below the web acting as if she couldn't see the spider. I found it not very plausible since she had at least to notice the big camera pointing at her and the strobe light just a few inches above her head, but I think the whole point was to show that these kind of spiders are so common that Australians are known to live their lives as if they didn't worry about living in the most dangerous country in the world (talking about snakes and spiders and other venomous and potentially mortal creatures).
Years afterwards, when confronted with the possibility of following Steve into his home country I thought the worst thing that could happen related to spiders was that my friend would have never come to visit (and truth be told she hasn't so far, although for different reasons, even though I figure the moment she'd step into this country she would spot a spider on the airport tarmac).
When interrogated on the subject an exasperated Steve said:" There ARE no spiders, there ARE no spiders, in my whole life I might have seen a dozen Funnel-web spiders.... tops!" You see, that's the thing that scares me the most, the fact that he felt like he had to add "tops" at the end of that already illogical sentence.
But feelings proved to be stronger than fears and three years on here I am, and the only spiders I have seen are the ones at the zoo or at the museum of natural history.
Up until today that is.
Yes, because this afternoon I was playing with my cats in the backyard, or rather trying to make the look of boredom in their eyes a little less permanent by entertaining them with a string.
When I saw the top part of of their scratch-post capsized on the garden.
I took it and put it back straight down.
And then I noticed a spider running for cover on the top of it.
It looked slightly bigger than the average garden spider so I looked closely and I immediately knew I was in front of a Red-back. How? Er... it's a got a red stripe on its back.
There you have it. I cannot pretend I live in a safe place anymore.
Until today I could laugh nervously at the stories I hear from time to time about people finding spiders and snakes in their gardens, thinking "this won't happen to you, you're safe, your place doesn't have any spiders, they just live in your neighbours' places but as soon as they get close to yours there's a magical spell that pushes them gently away and they know they cannot get in.".
ahahah, did I mention the nervous laughter?
Well, no going back now, I saw it.
As a matter of fact I even took pictures of it.
And in order to do that I had to get quite close, even closer that what Steve would have wanted me to, since on the phone he said he would have dealt with it when he'd got back home but he told me not to get too close.
The fact is that this thing is very small.
Seriously, MUCH smaller than our poor italian perfectly harmless garden spiders.
And they're kind of cute too.
They are black and their abdomen is rather swollen with a bright red stripe on it.
The whole thing is not bigger than my thumb.
See, that's how they get you, you don't take them seriously and when they bite you you think it's a minor bite and don't even pay attention to it.
But it can be fatal!
I've done my research, on internet and on a book I bought about venomous creatures of Australia and it says that sometimes the venom can take days to take its course but that in severe cases it can provoke paralysis and even death!
The good news is they created an anti-venom and that you have plenty of time to go to a hospital before you can be considered in danger.
Still.
You see, being italian means you grow up with a lot of things in your garden, but as gross as they can sometimes be they will never kill you.
The closest you can go is the viper in the mountains and god knows I've seen my share of those when I was trekking, but we were told how to deal with them and I've learnt to fear and respect snakes. That's why I wasn't so shocked when I found a Red-belly Black Snake just outside my window watching my tv (I asked him if he wanted me to change channel and then I took a photo of him, what is it with me and taking photos anyway??? can't I just run like every sane human being would do?).
Anyway, what I mean is that for me to feel that something can kill me it has to be at least as big as my hand.... like the killer spiders in the movies, you know, BIG! Not that I ever want to see one that big, for goodness' sake, if the internet tells me that a spider as big as my thumb can kill me that's more than enough to keep me away... after a photo shoot of course.
Well, after checking that my cats couldn't get close to it I just gave up and got inside to write this, waiting for Steve to come home, and then I will have something else to worry about since like every Australian I know, Steve is fully aware of the dangers represented by these venomous creatures but he still goes around bare footed and he will probably not want to kill it but gently pick it up and put into our neighbours' gardens... "There ARE no spiders, there ARE no spiders...".
