Australian Spiders - A garden-variety huntsman

Here is another of the eight-legged critters in my garden. This one startled me by running down the trunk of the tree I was pruning - again in late autumn. Needless to say, I was instantly distracted. This is a huntsman - the first one I've seen out in the garden. (Usually, they're running across a wall, or the ceiling.) I'm not sure if it's male of female. It stayed out for quite some time, so I took a lot of shots from a whole lot of different angles over the course of about an hour and a half.

We encountered each other in the late afternoon.






And the spider stayed around as the sun gradually faded.






It was quite late by the time I went inside to cook dinner. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.