Spider-blog!

Like everyone else in Australia, we dry most of our clothes on a clothesline.  We do have a dryer (negotiated it on our rental agreement) but it is very small and we really only use it for towels or things that will take a long time to dry.  We may, however, start using it just a little bit more. 
Our clothesline is in our backyard.  It is one of these collapsible dealies that folds down flat against the fence.  On Saturday morning we hung up some laundry and when we pulled out the frame of the clothesline, discovered an entire web-world created by one very industrious spider.  The spider seemed content to stay in it's own corner so, after great deal of toe and bum-clenching, we got the clothes hung up on the other end of the line and Jim called on his vast store of his spider-killing abilities.  These abilities worked very well in Canada.  The Aussie spider had a few moves that Jim had not seen before.  With Jim, heavily armed with a handful of paper towels, trying to lunge and grab spidey, Joanne stood on a chair in the house, with the glass doors closed, making squealing noises.  After about 5 minutes of war, a truce was declared and the spider abandoned his web, going off to live in a nearby tree.
After we got our heart rates back down near normal we went back out to hang up the rest of the laundry.  Some kind of movement caught our attention.  On a web above the backdoor of our neighbours' house was a spider with a body the size of an average adult's thumb...plus his legs!  He can easily be seen from 5 metres away, which was how far away the above photo was taken (with maximum zoom).
If we find one of these spiders on our clothesline, we'll just buy new clothes every week.  Neither of us is going near one of those things!