"On The Edge"

Royal National Park
New South Wales

Our final chance to find a large Blue Mountain funnel-web spider (Hadronyche versuta) rested on a cabinet maker called Nathan Cheeseman who had been recommended to us by the Australian Museum, as an expert on funnel-webs. He said he would meet us out at the Royal National Park, 29 kms south of Sydney, and we met him jogging down the road with his girlfriend Jo.

Founded in 1879, Royal National Park is the second oldest national park in the world after Yellowstone. Entering the Park certainly gives the impression of age, the trees are ancient and the dense vegetation is almost Jurassic in appearance, you could easily get lost in here.

Towering dark trees and ferns higher than a man add to the ancient feel of the Royal National Park

Aided by Nathan, Roz Whitten and I set out to find a large Blue Mountain funnel-web and we did find several large females walled up in tree-holes, the holes now too small for them to escape back to the outside world. In here they would feed on any invertebrates that ventured into their lair, lay their eggs, guard their young and presumably perish. We found the sloughed chelicerae (fang-sheaths) of an immense female outside one such tree-hole. We did no like to disturb these females in standing trees but eventually we found one in a rotten log and were able to extricate it for the venom program. We had wanted to find a male, the more venomous of the species, but in the end settled for a large female.

Tree-hole of female Blue Mountain funnel-web spider, Hadronyche versuta	Huge sloughed chelicerae (fang sheath) from a large female, found outside her hole
A happy Roz	and a final Piece to Camera

Blue Mountain funnel-web spider, Hadronyche versuta