5-6 per summer is still too many for me, so you can imagine the sniffling, dribbling nervous wreck I became the summer we rented a flat that had a huntsman problem. After encountering eight indoors in a week, I couldn’t sleep and was getting up hourly to check for them. I was all for burning the place down and starting over.
This house has a huntsman problem too (like the flat, it has gum trees nearby) but we get it sprayed at the start of summer and that seems to be working… So far.
Australia is firmly on my list of places never to visit…
Would this be a good time to mention that when I was locking my front door on the way out of the house this morning I realised that there was a huntsman spider on the cuff of my shirt? Like, the one that I was wearing, right near my hand?
I mostly mention that for AClockworkMelon’s benefit, but it also goes out to all the other people who no longer want to live in Australia. 
Side note: There was also one in my food cupboard a little while ago. That one was particularly harrowing because I had to deal with it before I could eat breakfast.
I’d rather live with huntsmen than in a sprayed house. Far safer. If the spray is strong enough to stay around for weeks or months and still kill them, then it sounds pretty drastic to me. Normal fly spray dissipates in an hour or so, and it rarely works well on spiders without a massive dose. So what the hell do they spray to work all summer?
Or maybe you just haven’t seen any huntsmen and give credit to the spray? There is no way to stop spiders. One kill spree will not last long at all. They just float in again as tiddlers on their little wiffs of silk and grow into big spiders within weeks.
Unlike America, where some states really do have the brown recluse (like Texas where I saw plenty) which can do serious damage occasionally, none of our spiders cause any real damage - no deaths for 50 years or so - because there are anti-venoms. There’s myths about white-tailed spiders causing brown-recluse symptoms, but they are myths.
Not visiting Australia because of spiders is crazy. Everywhere in the world has spiders. I photographed spiders in America for my book. Texas, for example, does far bigger than anything we have with their New World tarantulas - and they have huntsmen just as big as ours. I managed a higher spider count in a Texas house than I could ever manage here. So Texas does more dangerous and bigger and more numerous - yet I never hear anyone saying they won’t visit Texas because of the spiders. Or do they?
Intellectually, I grasp that spiders are our allies, and I don’t harm them. But they still give me the creeps.
A couple of years ago, I was helping my wife’s sister clean her house (she’s a borderline hoarder), and while turning over a plastic swimming pool in the overgrown back yard, found black widow spiders.
I know everyone on the Internet claims to have encountered black widows, but I’m very sure of the ID on these, as they were in irregular webs, the right size, glossy black, pointy-legged, and they had the red mark on their abdomens. I bent down close and ever-so-carefully maneuvered my cell phone in to snap a close-up of the biggest black widow…
And something went down the back of my neck. Something dry and skittery.
Even as it happened, I knew it was a leaf; dry brown leaves had been dropping from the trees overhead all morning. Still, I endured the Mother of All Shudders, and almost fell over sideways.
Well now you got me saying that. I won’t be visiting either Australia or Texas now. That’s why I live somewhere with a good winter - keeps the insects small.
Yeah, but did you get the shot?
[Edited to add: I wouldn’t have, but that’s mostly because I wouldn’t have gotten near enough to do so. And I won’t look if you post a link to it, either. Anything with more than 4 legs or fewer than 2 is unnatural, and I ain’t having it!]
Nervous Pom: - “Any snakes around here, mate?”
Aussie: “Nah, no snakes around here. Not one. [PAUSE] Spiders ate 'em all…” 
Have you ever been to Florida? Because we have those here, too. I’ve encountered them twice in my home. The first one, my dad decided to vacuum up. A leg was left behind. (Shudder) The second time, my then husband captured put a coffee can over the spider, then slid a stiff piece of paper under the can and released the spider outside. I’ve heard them called “housekeeper” spiders here, because they eat roaches and other critters you don’t want in your house. But I couldn’t live with one of these things. No sir.
Don’t worry about the spider. They’re our friends! Or that’s what Mark Voegel from Dortmund, Germany, thought.
I did, actually, although blurry. Unfortunately I have a cell phone camera that doesn’t have an output port – I’m supposed to subscribe to their internet service in order to download the photos. So far I have refused to comply with this obvious ploy.
Meh, color me skeptical, widow bites are neither rapidly nor commonly fatal.
That story appears to be completely made up, as there’s no evidence of it outside of a single Newspaper (the Sun) that repeatedly prints it.
My mother is fond of saying “If you’ve got spiders in the house it’s because you’ve got things that spiders eat in the house.” Which is likely true but hardly comforting.
And I used to scare people with that story! Ah well, you can’t believe anything you read in the newspaper nowadays.
Oh it’s true alright. You have eyes, don’t you? Big, juicy, sweet eyes? :smack:
WooHoo, go dopers, fight the ignorance.
You’re thinking of cats. It’s cats that go for the eyes. Spiders go for the ears or mouth as prime eating/burrowing/egglaying locations.
Or occasionally other soft tissue…
And termites are cellulose eaters, not human bodies. And so the errors in it go on and on.
I think you’re joking. But just in case you aren’t:
No they don’t. They can’t eat flesh. They don’t burrow in it. Nor do they lay eggs in it or wet mouths. Otherwise, you’re right. I love spiders!