Big as a mans hand? 12 inches would cover my face:eek:
Yes it would.
I have only ever seen one that big. Hand-size is more common, or smaller.
Or if my cats get to them, I try to reconstruct the size from the pile of legs left behind. 
Is there some kind of ethnic Australian spider stomp dance?
Yeah, I first saw these:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Mj0sq5l3RrI/SrQiWcpWoKI/AAAAAAAAAHg/F1IjBOBxATc/s320/Banana+Spider.jpg
When I was about 10 years old. Several of them would web in our 10x10x8 back porch and a good deal of my dreams (nightmares.)
I don’t get that close! I have an agreement with them, they don’t come into my kitchen and I don’t go out of my way to drown them in Motien. 
I live in Melbourne, but lived in Sydney for a year, during which I once saw a St Andrew’s Cross spider. It was suspended quite a distance from my balcony, but looked effing enormous.
Thanks. I have a new desktop background.
You don’t have those in Melbourne?
We have scads of them, all in the trees in the yard, but they don’t bother you and I’ve never seen one in the house. The ones I see are big, but they are pretty - their webs are all tidy and the spiders themselves are pretty colours and just pretty looking sitting there in their cross-shapes.
I dunno, they don’t freak me like mouse spiders and huntsmen and funnel webs and redbacks - although I think redbacks are pretty to -er…so long as they remain Over There.
“There was a red back on the toilet seat when I was there last night
I didn’t see it in the dark, but boy I felt it’s bite.”
God damn spiders.
When i lived in Sydney, i had to cease my morning runs because of these and other orb-weaving spiders.
I lived in a part of town (Petersham) where there were quite a lot of small trees and shrubs planted along the sidewalk, and the orb weavers loved to string their webs between these plants and the front fences of the houses lining the street. This, of course, meant that the first person to walk (or run) down the sidewalk each day had the pleasure of inadvertently running into the webs and ending up with a sticky mess of web and a confused spider in his or her face.
I realize that the spiders are harmless, but i still prefer not to get one in the face, and running into the webs is rather unpleasant, so i took to running in the afternoons instead, before the spiders rebuilt their webs for the night.
One of the most fascinating things, though, is to watch and orb weaver building its web. I used to sit on our back porch and watch them work in the evenings, and it really is an incredible thing to see. Here’s a video, and there are a bunch of others on YouTube.
We had a clothes line in our back yard, and the orb weavers would often use it to hook up their webs. If there were clothes hanging on the line, they would use the clothes too, and it was not unusual to bring your laundry in and have an orb weaver or two along for the ride. Occasionally i would bring in the laundry basket and put it on my bed, go way to do something else, and come back to find a web strung between my bed and my wardrobe.
Not just no, but hell no.
Gleena, I’da been right there with your hubby. Damn thing can have the house.
Does any place say “Go Away!” as loudly as Australia? Pretty country, but geez. Maybe Arizona comes close.
I studied in Australia (Murdoch Uni in Perth) as an undergrad, and travelled up to Darwin to see the place. My flatmate called her parents there, and they graciously invited me to stay with them. They have a finished basement, very nice. I had my own bathroom and everything. I went in there in the morning to shower, only to be greeted by two large hairy black spiders. (Maybe 2, 3 inches across? What can I say, they were huge to me. I’m terrified of spiders.) That ran like the wind - seriously, these things were fast. One ran behind the towels. Yeah, no way I’m showering down there. (Although I did seriously consider it; apparently my fear of looking foolish is as strong as my arachnophobia.)
Well, not nearly as strong. After realizing that there wasn’t a chance of me using the convenient downstairs bathroom, I resolved to go upstairs and bother my very gracious hosts. I open the door, only to find another of the damn things guarding the door. (I threw wadded up Kleenexes at it until it ran away.) I then went upstairs and sheepishly admitted my fear about the spiders in the downstairs basement. My flatmate’s father kindly patted me on the head and pointed me to their bathroom.
To be fair, my flatmate admitted that she was just as happy when the spiders didn’t show up in the bathroom too. Though she probably just dealt with them if they were there, unlike me.
Eeugh. Cue arachnodisco and willies. Ick.
Mouse spiders? Please tell me that you mean spiders that look like mice, not that they’re mouse-sized or eat mice or anything like that…
They’re huge and ugly, you have been warned.
ETA: From that web page:
“Why ‘mouse’ spiders? No good reason. But possibly the name was given for the large, supposedly ‘mouse-like’ burrows built by the big inland Red-headed Mouse Spiders. These large, silk-lined burrows vary from 20 cm to 55 cm deep and are widest in the entrance and bottom chamber areas. A side chamber extends off the main burrow shaft, usually closed by a trapdoor. It provides a refuge from predators and a safe place for the egg sac and spiderlings.”
The Australian Tourist Board called. They want this thread closed, stat. 
Hi former neighbour - are we the US/Australia exchange program (I’m in Newtown, from CA…)
I have that problem on my morning dog walks. I also have a dog that very much hates to run into spider webs, and he’s a big boy. He’ll drop and roll and whimper and generally act like a moron if he runs into one.
I admit to laughing at him…
See? No. Invertibrates do NOT kill and eat vertibrates. That is NOT how the food chain works. It is not natural. God damn Ilwrath scum.
I just keep picturing God with a box left over marked “scary and/or venomous” and he just dumped it over Australia.
Apparently they’re primarily in the northeast, just NSW and QLD. And I hope they stay there.
Ignorance fought, thanks.