G'day Charlie,

The Funnelweb occasionally encountered in the Blue Mts would be atrax formidabilis while the Sydney Funnelweb is atrax robustus. The latter is considered the deadliest spider in the world ... but there's about 4,000,000 people in Sydney who have never seen one! (And there are definitely none anywhere near the Shannon.)

You could probably coax someone to sing The Redback on the Toilet Seat ... or I could be moved to give you The Spider by the Gwydir, about uncomfortable encounters with another bitey resident, latrodectus hasseltii, but Redbacks are comparatively harmless ... only a local variant of your Black Widow latrodectus maculatus,

I mentioned Copperhead snakes to Liam's Brother a while back, in relation to an incidental encouter (fatal to the Copperhead, not me). He replied that there is a snake called a Copperhead in America ... and it is kind of deadly, which got the usual Australian reply "Yeah, but not as deadly as this one!".

It was a few weeks later that he e-mailed and said he had just watched a nature documentary on snakes - and they said "Of the world's 10 deadliest snakes ... 10 live in Australia!" Probably true, but we don't have to walk around the shopping centres with snakebite kits in our back pockets. I see quite a few deadly snakes, which is more than the average Aussie does, but I leave them alone and they reciprocate.

Friends living in the Blue Mts are involved in wildlife rescue ... and that includes snakes. Helen horrified my wife Patricia by stepping outside the hose with a sugar-bag and a forky stick ... and bagging a pair of Copperheads ... to release them somewhere safer (for the snakes!).

Regards,

Bob Bolton