The boy’s scream was one of those piercing examples that had me and his mother off the sofa as though we’d been hit with a cattleprod. It was the kind of shriek that goes hand in hand with real trauma – losing an arm, perhaps, or stumbling across the neighbourhood psycho, resplendent in hockey mask and wielding a throbbing chainsaw.

It was no surprise then that when we reached the backyard seconds later we saw our nine-year-old shaking with fear in the moonlight.

He’d gone out, torch in hand, to look for the six-inch plastic cricketer he’d picked up earlier that day from a KFC kids meal. It was, apparently, integral to a game he and his sister were immersed in – and my reluctance to join the search had resulted in a mini-strop before he stomped out vowing to overcome his fear of the dark and find the petite wicketkeeper himself.

And he had been doing OK too, until he had shone his torch up towards the guttering of our suburban home and illuminated in all its glory the intricate web of an orb spider. That’s scary enough, but to complete the horror movie cliché, right smack bang in the middle of the web was the spider itself.

For those of you not up with your arachnids, let’s take a moment to introduce you to the orb spider. Like just about every creepy crawly in Australia, they have a nasty bite. Yes, it’s not the most potent – chances are you’d pull through if it nipped you, but you’d have to get through the kind of nausea and fever normally reserved for a hangover after both red and white wine have been chased down by tequila – but this little beauty has an added menace.

Firstly it’s a good size – about three or four centimetres – so it looks the part. Secondly, its modus operandi, fly catching-wise, is to spin its web at roughly adult human head height and sit in the middle of it waiting for dinner. And, unless it’s a particularly well moonlit night – or it’s caught in the glare of a nine-year-old’s torch – the web is completely invisible.

Which leads to an interesting side effect. Apparently a good couple of dozen Aussies each year amble out into their backyards, walk straight into the web and, suddenly consumed by the abject terror of having an evil looking spider on their face, have a heart attack and die.

Which, if I’m honest, is probably exactly what my reaction would have been had the boy not discovered the beast and I had got a face-full of it during the next trip to our outdoor wine fridge.

Anyway, after a good five minutes of staring at our new housemate – and a bit of googling to find out exactly what it was – my family made it clear that I, as the man of the house, was now expected to evict it.

Now, I’ve never been scared of spiders. Back in the UK, I could never quite understand the panic they’d inspire in some people. If I came across one, I’d pick it up and put it outside – my over-spiritual mother had instilled a karmic approach to pest control in me as a child which involved removal rather than destruction.

As a newly enrolled citizen of Australia, of course, all that has changed. I still claim to not be scared of spiders, but I have to admit that I have much more respect for them here. Mainly because you have to live with the fact that this 50 cent-sized piece of evolution can probably kill you. That fact alone, then, has also blown all ‘live and let live’ ideologies out of the water. Now, if I see a spider, it’s not going to have much time before it becomes a dead spider.

Normally, a heavy work boot or telephone directory will do the trick – but both would have been useless with our orb spider, suspended as it was in its web with no flat surface behind it for it to be squished upon. Instead, then, I reached for the bug spray, aimed and delivered what I presumed was going to be a lethal dose of chemicals into the centre of the web.

The orb spider, however, was not going to go quietly.

It had been absolutely still while me, my wife and our two children had peered at it, discussed it, marvelled at it. But, as soon as the spray was unleashed, it was out of there, scuttling across its web at horrifically high speed. The kids screamed. My wife screamed. I screamed.

Desperately, amid the shrieks I tried to bring it down with a barrage of bug spray but it kept scuttling until, with what seemed like a backward glance of loathing, it disappeared into the guttering.

“Is it dead?” the boy asked.

“Yes, son,” I replied. “Yes, it is.”

I tried to sound certain, but failed. I knew that I didn’t know whether the spider was dead or whether it was at that moment sitting in its lair mulling over whose face to drop on in revenge in the middle of the night. And my kids knew I didn’t know. And my wife knew I didn’t know.

We didn’t speak of it again that night, but none of us slept well. We stared at shadows, jumped at creaks and expected the orb spider’s return.

But, daylight eventually returned. I googled again – this time for an exterminator – and found a chap called Reliable Dan. He arrived that afternoon, looking for all the world like a Ghostbuster with his overalls and cylinders of insecticide strapped to his back. Calmly, he went to work, methodically spraying nooks and crannies around our home. Once done, he told us not to go outside in bare feet for 24 hours and warned that our backyard was now going to fill up with tiny corpses.

And it did. The next morning, the paving slabs were littered with dead spiders, cockroaches and other bugs which crunched underfoot as I tried to sweep them all into one place so I could scoop them into the wheely bin. There were hundreds of them and, as I cleared them away, I couldn’t help but inspect each dustpan load to see if the orb spider’s remains were in it.

I never, however, found the body. Still, the kids don’t have to know that, do they?