Eye of the spider

I'm not someone who's ever been frightened of spiders - chief among their many qualities, for instance, is the fact that they like to eat my mortal enemy, the mosquito. Since arriving in Australia, I've had to accustom myself to the fact that spiders here are a whole lot bigger than the ones I'm used to - and are also potentially more dangerous than the skittery old daddy-long-legs I did battle with as a child at night (although as yet I have never met anything poisonous, and I've shared living space with one or two large huntsmen spiders which seem benign enough). Despite slightly depressing advice to avoid spiders altogether, occasionally I will be stopped in my tracks by a beautiful creature at the centre of a large web, constructed without fear or favour in a little bush in the street: like the one above, encountered in Myrtle Street, which is an orb-weaver (even the name is magical).