Sometime mid April, 2018 in Tasmania. 

It had already been what I coined an epically “Aussie” day. It started at an animal sanctuary in Hobart, Tasmania, where a six foot kangaroo nearly de-pantsed me while I was “commando” (not wearing underwear). I turned around to see two other kangaroos having sex. By this point, I already felt I’d seen a good bit of action for one day, but the antics were just warming up…

After wrapping up the marsupial sexcapade, we made a desolate drive in the dark through Tasmania’s countryside to Freycinet National Park. The trek was a “roo” ridden venture. For context, when first arriving in Oz, I was “frothing,” as they say, to see my first kangaroo (I’m told I saw kangaroos in Oz back in ‘88, not surprisingly as a then one-year-old I have absolutely zero recollection of this). Fast Forward thirty years and my anticipation to see a roo quickly gravitated to the annoyance shared by locals. This is not unlike the sentiment towards deer on the road back in the states, or at least where I hail from in Wisconsin. I thought of deer often on that drive as we exclaimed “roo!” while swerving with pounding hearts. As this continued, our concern dissipated to a nonchalant and indifferent tone: 

“Another roo…” 

Eyeroll. 

This was a vast change of pace from the startled “Jesus Christ!” that initiated the charade in fearing we’d hit one head-on. After a much longer drive than anticipated—no thanks to our clunky twenty-year-old Mitsubishi Express van—we eventually arrived at Freycinet. 

To be clear, the other half of the “we” was my partner at the time, who I’ve given the pseudonym “Bob” in my essays (I might get more creative and switch up this pseudonym in the future, but for now, I feel that a minimal amount of time spent on this is befitting). 

We set up camp, a ritual of moving a whole lot of shit from the bed of the van to the front seats, so we could comfortably sleep. We repeated this ritual every night once we were done driving for the day. We were ready for food and slumber; it had been a long day of marsupial antics of all varieties, including an interesting encounter with a smaller marsupial (one not involved in the sexcapade). We later discovered it to be a pademelon (paddy-melon). Absolutely adorable. 

Our kitchen setup was in the “boot” of the van. I opened it up, delighted to be cooking fried rice which I had been craving and planning on for days! I got the rice in water, diced the carrots, and got those in some shallow water (no, this is not a cooking essay), and moved on to chopping green onions. At this moment, Bob shrieked that he saw a “giant spider,” claiming it was the size of his open palm. Bob had very big hands. 

Hmmmm, I don’t see anything, I thought to myself.

“I’m sure it’s fine. I’m SO hungry…”

Having just smoked some weed and finding himself a bit shaken up at the idea of said spider, all six-foot-one, two hundred pounds of Bob climbed into the van. He diligently peered out of the open “boot” with his torch (headlamp), on guard as my lookout. On guard from inside the van. 

I chuckled as I voiced my appreciation for the extra set of eyes. Food was on my mind. Back to the green onions. Chop, chop, ch—

“AHHHH!”

Nearly taking a fucking finger off, I bolted away from the table mid chop. A humongous spider sprinted right across the table, over the cutting board, and disappeared into the dark mystery of the underside of the table. 

Bob screamed too.

Shit, I thought, I didn’t look up what spiders are poisonous in Tasmania, only on the mainland. What if that spider is Tassie’s version of the funnel web?!

The funnel web is a poisonous spider, which we encountered in the Bluey’s (Blue Mountains). If bitten by a funnel web, you have twenty minutes to get to a hospital or you die. Read that again.

“Bob! Look up poisonous spiders in Tassie!” 

“I tried! I don’t have service!” 

“FUCK.”

Okay, what’s one spider? I thought. Probably the same one Bob saw before. I also have him to keep watch. I’ll just keep cooking. 

I then looked under the table with my headlamp…

“He’s not there anymore–he’s not there!!!” 

“What the fuuuuck?!?!” Bob’s voice trembled, trembled.

The next thing we knew, there were not one, two but THREE spiders! Bob yelled at me for the umptienth time to shut down the cooking operation. This time, I agreed. 

Not surprisingly, I documented the evening’s tomfoolery in my journal…

“I quickly started putting things away, as fast as I could.

Bob stayed on spider watch from the inside of the van. 

Rice was away, green onions are in the fridge, carrots in tupperware, and gas is cooked out of the hose, so just the table and we’re done! 

‘Leave the fucking table! This is an emergency! Close the boot! Fuck me!”

Bob was kind of losing it. 

“I can’t close the boot! The table’s in the way!”

“Shit. Don’t move the table! Don’t touch it… Move the van!”

“Fuck! Fuck! Okay!” 

I ran to the front of the van to move it forward, so I could close the boot. This was a time to be quick… They could be crawling into the van!

“There’s too much shit on the seat!”

I briefly entertained the idea of doing that whole drive with one foot on the petal and one on the ground outside, but in a moment of intensity like this, I could see that going very, very poorly… The last thing we needed was to accidentally drive our home on wheels into the bush! I ran back to the boot…

“I’m moving the table!”

“No!”

“I have to!”

“Fuck! Okay! I’ll shine the torch!”

Thanks for the support, Bob.

I moved the table in teeny, tiny and rapid increments then ran into the van as fast as I could.

With wide eyes and a sober expression, Bob immediately jolted his head:

“We’re NOT staying here tomorrow! We’re leaving it ALL…We’ll get a new table and water jug…Fuck maybe even a new van!’

Bob felt very passionately about this, and continued with his public service announcement:

“We’re not going climbing here anymore…”

We all have our breaking point.

He proceeded to list off things we were no longer going to do since these spiders live where we were on the coast. Then, we sat on edge, trying to chill the fuck out. We felt like things were crawling on us…phantom spiders! Bob shared more of his discontent:

“I’m totally wearing the wrong shorts for this!”

I thought he meant it was because the leg openings of his shorts were baggy. Turns out it was because (since they had been cut into shorts) there were heaps of threads hanging from them and tickling his legs. Bob was high which didn’t help his paranoia. He was terrified when I went out to pee… but nature called.”

It had been an epically “Aussie” day. 

It was maybe two days later we found a smaller spider (though still relatively big for our standards) in the van upon waking up. It was dead. We wondered, what in the van could have killed that spider? Was there a larger spider lurking inside our home on wheels?

---

Thank you for reading! Click here if you enjoyed the essay and would like to leave a tip for the author!

---