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Most spiders at Hamby Home(in)stead are gently captured and escorted outside. 

Erin does some volunteer work with Museum Victoria and recently introduced us to Badge Huntsman spiders.  That is, one of our household spiders was caught in the usual method - identified with much excitement - and then taken into the Museum, where it is now on display!  Of course, we are quite pleased that one of "our" spiders was accepted for exhibit!

The Badge Huntsman is distinctive due to a smiley-face "badge" on the underside of it's abdomen.  How neat is that?! 

Nick found this fellow on our first morning at camp and relocated him/her to a nearby tree.  We discovered another badged fellow tucked in a compartment of the dish drainer on our second morning.  We assume it was a different spider and not the first keen to spend more time with us!

Another arachnid!

We've been in party preparation mode today. One mission involved moving our camping mats.

Nick and Vaughan found this guy sitting beside the stack. It seems he is a silverback - and we know he is a male cos of the silver hair. Pretty nifty, eh?!

Nick has just pointed out the stacked mats would represent a series of holes (or funnels) and the spider may have been looking at accommodating himself and a heap of rellies in new apartments?!

Lotsa legs ...

There are so many different bugs and critters here - huge numbers of many different varieties. 

It is really amazing to see them all!

I don't have a spider book but probably should get one to add to my reference library. 

The striped-leg fellow on the left (sitting on the lid of the washing machine) is a similar shape to the huntsman spiders we see at home - though this guy/girl is prettier, I think.

I spotted the yellow-ish spider while walking around the Bluff today.  He/she actually looked silver in the daylight, moving quickly and often posing in a head-down position.  He/she obviously wasn't overly keen to be photographed!

We saw the third spider last night while out spotlighting.  I think it was last year that we did a night geocache in a Central Coast forest.  As we walked along by torchlight, it looked as if someone had scattered tiny blue sapphires along in front of us.  On closer inspection, the blue jewels were spider eye-shine!  Last night our big torch caught tiny orange-yellow eye-shine, which led us to a different kind of spider.  As we watched he/she caught a small moth!