Camel Spiders? Just kittens compaired compaired to the Australian Bird Eating Spider, or the Sydney Funnel Web Spider, of which I have both encountered.
Not long after i migrated here, I was humping a M60 GPMG thru the bush as we were in Coy formation advancing by Platoon.
It was dark, and full moon, and a head of us was the point man on the lead section of the lead platoon. He let ourt a gut curdeling scream, and we all went to ground. After some brief confusion the Medics ran up to him, and when they carried him off, he was babbling on and on, and quite freaked out, as a big hairy spider, the size of your hand, and apparently whitle in colour had bit him directly on the end of his nose, as the spider had a web right in the path he was on. He was in heaps of pain, but the species was not lethal.The web was made in such a twisted way, a small branch off a tree would hang in it.
On later exercises, when point man, I would fix a M9 bayonet to my F88 to avoid such things, and yes I cut thru many webs like this deep in the Aussie ‘J‘and in the southern bush too.
Do a search for "sydney funnel web spider" and you‘ll see what I mean.
A quick snake story too, on another ex, a a section rested, and the Digger took off his webbing. Upon saddling up, he put his webbing back on, not realising that a snake had crawled into the harness assy.
He was bitten several times in the lower back, and was choppered out to the nearest hospital. After many anti-venine shots, he survived, and was lucky to get to medical aid as fast as he did.
Cheers,
Wes
