Out of The Dreamtime - Search for Australias Unknown Animals  Book Cover

Blue Mountains Funnel Web Spider

Hadronyche versuta. Male body length is up to 18mm, females up to 44mm. This is the deadliest Funnel Web species in Australia and arguably the world’s deadliest spider species. The species is distributed throughout the Blue Mountains where it is most common, and eastwards from the Kurrajong area into towns bordering the Hawkesbury River in the Richmond, Windsor, Castle Hill and Hornsby areas following the sandstone country; as well as the outer Western Suburbs, southward along the Georges River sandstone country, the Southern Highlands and South Coast around Moruya.

Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2006.

Funnel Web Spider
Out Of The Dreamtime
The Search for Australasia’s Unknown Animals
Book Contents
Dedications
Special Dedication
Dr Bernard Heuvelmans
Acknowledgements
Preface
Monsters in Our Own Backyard
Foreword
What is Cryptozoology?
Introduction
A Night in the Australian Bush
PART ONE
Setting the Scene. “In the Beginning”
CHAPTER ONE
Enigma of the Bunyip
CHAPTER TWO
Dawn Life of the Dreamtime
PART TWO
Enigmas Of The Insect/Spider World
CHAPTER THREE
Insect Mysteries
CHAPTER FOUR
Migration Mysteries
CHAPTER FIVE
Giant Spiders of the Australian Bush
PART THREE
Lions and Tigers of the Australian Bush
CHAPTER SIX
The Tasmanian Tiger – Lost
and Found
CHAPTER SEVEN
What is the Queensland Tiger
CHAPTER EIGHT
Australia’s Mysterious Marsupial Lions – Meat-Eaters of the Miocene
CHAPTER NINE
The “Australian Panther” – Big Cats of the Bushland
CHAPTER TEN
Living Mega-Marsupials?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Devil dogs of the Dreamtime
PART FOUR
Fishy Tales
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mega-Sharks of Oceania
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Coelacanth Found on an Australian Beach and other “Fishy Mysteries”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Menagerie of Monsters
PART FIVE
Reptilian Nightmares
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Giant Sea Serpents of Australasia
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Giant Snakes -Nightmares of the Bushland
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Crocodiles-Dinosaurian Man-eaters of Australia’s North
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Australia’s Lizard Giants
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Megalania – Mega Monitors of the Australian Bush
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Secret of Dinosaur Swamplands
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Beware of Burrunjors in the Bush
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Pterosaurs Over Australasia
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
New Guinea’s Fabulous Neodinosaurs
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Plesiosaur Mysteries of the South Pacific
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Australian Plesiosaur Mysteries
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Longneck Tales of the Georges River
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Search for the Hawkesbury River Monster
PART SIX
Feathered Giants
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Living Feathered Fossils
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Moas Survive in New Zealand?
The Search for the Scrub Moa
CHAPTER THIRTY
Giant Eagles of the Blue Mountains
PART SEVEN
Manbeasts of Australasia and Oceania
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Australia’s Unknown Miocene Primates
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Dawn Hominids of the Dreamtime
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Homo erectus and the Giants
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Gargantuan Hominids of the Dreamtime
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
The Hairy Man Dreamtime Australia
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
Historical Accounts of the Yowie
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Hairy Men of the Blue Mountains
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
The Yowie-Hominid Mysteries of
the Australian Outback
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
In Search of Little Hairy Men
CHAPTER FORTY
In Search of the Rexbeast
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Hairy Devil-Men of Melanesia
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Moehau and Matau – Manbeasts
of Aotearoa

PART EIGHT
Conclussion

CHAPTER FORTY THREE
The Search for Mysterious Animals – Advice for Future Cryptozoologists.

Appendix
Save Our Butterfly Species!

Notes
Bibliography


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Out Of The Dreamtime - The Search for Australasia’s Unknown Animals
by Rex & Heather Gilroy Copyright
© Rex Gilroy 2006

No part of this publication including all photographs and illustrations may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review, written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.

Dedication

This book is affectionately dedicated to my loyal, supportive and dedicated wife, and Number One researcher and fieldworker, Heather. This book is also affectionately dedicated to my late father W.F. [Bill] Gilroy [1904-1996], whose tales of his native Scotland and the Loch Ness Monster, led me, from about the age of five [!] to my lifelong research of the natural sciences and the fields of Cryptozoology and relict hominology, which has resulted in this book.

PART TWO

ENIGMAS OF THE INSECT/SPIDER WORLD
__________

CHAPTER FIVE
Giant Spiders of the Australian Bush

The date was Monday 9th July, 1990 and Heather and I were at Oak Beach north of Cairns, far north Queensland on an insect collecting excursion. I was that afternoon particularly interested in collecting variations of the Evening Brown butterfly, a species mostly active in the early morning and late afternoon, fluttering among the undergrowth of rainforest and scrubland of the coastal districts. It is common as far south as Port Macquarie in NSW, less common in the Newcastle area and rare in Sydney.

During the hours it is inactive, hiding in the grass and foliage, specimens can be disturbed by beating the foliage with the butterfly net pole. Even so, one has to be quick to catch one of these elusive butterflies, and once they settle, their underside wing markings blend in with the leafmould, making it virtually impossible to detect the creatures. As I moved cautiously along a jungle track I realised the sun was going down rapidly and light would soon be gone, which was just the right time to collect this species.

It was then that I spotted one springing up from the path ahead of me, fluttering off down the track as I gave chase, the net in my right hand, the left holding onto my bag containing my killing jars and other equipment slung over my left shoulder. Then, as I dashed along the track trying to keep an eye on the butterfly’s movements, I ran straight into a large, sticky spider web strung across the track, with what appeared to be a large amount of dead insects stuck to the centre of the thick webbing. In the dim light I had hardly noticed the web before I ran into it, covering my whole face and hair.

The Evening Brown escaped, while I began clearing the sticky webbing and dead bugs off my face. I knew from experience that this was the web of a Nephilla Spider, which are commonplace around Sydney and elsewhere.
However, the section containing the dead ‘food’ seemed to cling to my face and my fingers seemed unable to get it off. Then suddenly the sticky mess gave way and I clawed it off only to discover that I was holding an extremely large Nephilla!

It was a Female specimen of the Giant Nephilla Spider, with black prothorax and legs and a dark brown abdomen with a body 42mm in length, by 10mm width at the prothorax and abdomen, the front pair of legs being 110mm in length. The second pair of legs measured 80mm, the third pair being 52mm and the back pair 85mm in length. I kept this specimen, the largest in my spider collection up to that time.

Later, in 1994 I discovered these spiders as far south as Murwillumbah in far north-coastal NSW close to the Queensland border. Although not dangerous spiders, they are certainly guaranteed to give anyone a fright at first glance. Another well-known giant of the Australian bush is the Giant Huntsman, whose first and second pair of legs are up to 70mm in length with the body up to 40mm in length, with a prothorax and abdomen both about 17mm in width.

The male and female of this species differs in body and leg colour markings. Males are generally all brown spiders, while females possess grey bodies, the legs being grey and white striped. Huntsmen are not poisonous, although their bite can cause local pain and perhaps swelling around the bite area, these effects are short-lived. There is also a possibility of bacterial infection from some bites.Huntsmen belong to the Family Sparassidae, which contains many species Australia-wide.

The Giant Huntsman, Isopeda immanus [L. Koch] may even, if some bushman’s tales are correct, reach larger proportions, at least 165mm in leg expanse. Huntsmen are commonly met with in bushland, where their favourite hiding places are beneath the loose bark of trees. This is an environment to which their flat bodies are well suited. They are also known to enter houses, particularly on rainy nights, making themselves at home among blinds and curtains. It is not at all impossible that larger forms of the Huntsman Spider have yet to be identified by science.

During January 1983 I received several reports from people living in the Colo district, north-west of Sydney, of a giant size flat-bodied grey-coloured apparent Huntsman, measuring from 180 to 200mm in leg expanse. These spiders had more than once frightened campers at night on the Colo River.

From Gippsland, Victoria, I have received stories over the years of similar giant creatures. For example, in 1978 a Mr Ted Watts was pulling slabs of old bark off the trunk of a dead tree, when a tall slab gave away. As it fell, “a massive spider”, as he described it, fell to the ground at his feet. “It had a body about 4 inches long [100mm] and at least 1 ½ inches [40mm] width, and the legs were at least 16inches [405mm] in length. It looked like a huge Huntsman Spider, but I’d never seen one that size before”, he told me in 1981. The shock of that moment got the better of Ted, and he ran for some yards before stopping to see the spider disappearing into nearby bushes.

While the Giant Nephilla and Giant Huntsman may seem large, and that there might yet exist one or more unknown, even larger Giant Huntsman species, we now turn to other, even larger examples of the spider world which conservative university-based entomologists choose to ignore. The reason for their disbelief is that, not only do they believe that every important Australian spider species has been identified by scientists, but that creatures of the size about to be discussed belong only to the fossil record.

In brief, spiders are classed within the Phylum arthropoda, under the Class Arachnida, along with the Classes Crustacea [slaters]; Diplopoda [millipedes]; Chilopoda [centipedes] and Insecta [insects]. Insects of course posses 6 legs whilst spiders and their relatives, scorpions [Order Scorpionida] have eight. Fossil remains of ancestors of modern spiders include fragmentary remains of creatures with bodies approaching the size of a football. These fossils date back to Ordovician period times some 450 million years ago.

One Australian fossil, preserved in slate, contains only the prothorax and abdomen, with only the first segments of each of its eight legs remaining. The prothorax measures 8.5cm length by 6.5cm width, the abdomen being 9.5cm length by 6.5cm width. The leg segments are at least 15cm thick by about 4.5cm length and if the mandibles [missing in this fossil] were present along with the spinnerettes, the creature’s body length might have been up to about 23cm; and had the legs been intact, they might have reached a length of up to 35cm, even 40cm, making the entire specimen a monster of the spider world.

This fossil, from central Victoria, is similar to others found worldwide. What is interesting about this Australian fossil is its similarity to giant spiders of this size claimed seen in various parts of Australia today.

A massive black-bodied spider of this incredible size was claimed seen by Mr Dave Bennett in scrubland near Morwell, Victoria in October 1980. He told me later that he was frightened to approach it too closely. He had been hiking through scrubland when he spotted the huge arachnid clambering over fallen tree trunks coming in his direction. “I just moved off out of its way and observed it from some yards away, until it moved away into the scrub and I lost sight of it”, he said.

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