The other day we took our household garbage to the tip… er… I mean the Transfer Station. Nothing unusual there, except the T.S. was unusually neat and well ordered. We think that a new woman in the gate house might have had something to do with it.

As my partner was unloading the recycling boxes, two enormous Huntsman spiders scuttled first out of one and then the other. They ran down the sides of the boxes and clung to the bottom.

Rather than screaming in terror and leaping away  – as I most surely would have done – my partner calmly carried the boxes around to the back of the recycling shed, a place where spiders could reside happily, and waited till they’d found their way onto the ground.

Afterwards, he sometimes wondered how those spiders were getting on, transported far from home and possibly missing their families. Sometimes he’s just too cute for words.

On Saturday evening – en route to dinner with friends – we encountered a stationary vehicle on the road. It had been travelling in the opposite direction.

To supplement the main light in the car, the driver was shining the thin light from a small torch onto the dashboard. Her front-seat passenger was scrabbling about on it with his hands, occasionally batting at something.

With some difficulty I wound down the window and shouted, ‘Are you all right?’ The driver looked at me blankly before sliding down her window with the touch of a button. I repeated the question.

‘We’re trying to catch a spider,’ she shouted with more than a hint of panic. ‘Can you believe, it’s in the car.’

‘They do that at this time of year,’ I shouted back.

I would have added that at this time of year we’re used to seeing them in the house, too, but decided against it. Freaking out visitors with spider stories probably isn’t in the best interests of anyone.

It’s not just this part of the country where Huntsman spiders take up residence in cars and houses. A friend in Sydney, newly arrived from London, told us how he’d batted at one with his wallet as it had dashed to and fro across the windscreen. He’d been driving across the Harbour Bridge at the time and the experience had left him unhinged for quite a while.

Another friend in Sydney put on a denim jacket that had been draped over the back of a chair during the night. Seconds later, feeling a stabbing pain in her arm, she tore the jacket off and flung it to the ground. A Huntsman crawled out of the sleeve.

Planning to host a farewell party for friends that evening – us, in fact – she drove to the local pharmacy where she was supplied with antihistamines for her badly swollen arm and advised to report to the hospital if further symptoms arose. Fortunately, she managed to soldier on.

At home, a crawlie-catching kit is usually close to hand for capturing our many visiting spiders and insects. It’s an old plastic take-away container with a piece of A4 paper to slide over it. After examining our captives, we release them outside.

Without our kit on Saturday night, we were unable to assist the stricken occupants of the other car so we drove on.

A moment later my partner spoke. ‘I wonder if it’s one of those spiders we left at the tip trying to find its way home.’