I used to play with trapdoor spiders at high school. It was fun to tempt them out of their holes. My sister also did a study of funnel web spiders in the Canberra district at university. A friend of mine also swears she found a large tarantula in her house in south Canberra, even though they are not native to Australia. She has arachnophobia but all spiders love her and chase her round the house.