I think I'd seen pictures of these, but the one we came across the other day on my Blue Mountains bushwalk was probably the first I'd actually met. It's a red-headed mouse spider (Missulena occatoria). It's a similar size and shape to the Sydney funnel-web. And according to the Australian Museum, its venom is potentially as dangerous.
We didn't know any of this at the time, and to check whether or not this thing was in fact a type of funnel-web, we subjected it to the gold-standard test: we waved a stick at it. If it reared up and prepared to lunge, we'd been led to believe, then it's a funnel-web. It didn't, but we kept our distance anyway.
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