The quality of the house any given year fluctuated according to the fortunes of the family.

That year things must have been tight. The house was even humbler than usual – a fibro shack in the sandy flatlands well behind the dunes. I remember it with a dirt floor, but that's undoubtedly wrong.

What's clear, though, is that the dunny and shower were outdoors, a short walk from the back door, just near a wobbly totem tennis pole. Each night, mum and three kids would tip-toe out, trying to avoid bindies, for the evening shower.

It was crowded with four of us trying to clean ourselves and ablute, so Dad sat inside, no doubt plotting new ways to frustrate our hopes in Monopoly.

Sarah, my big sister would shower first, then Andrew, who was still young enough to need mum's help to get dry. Then I hopped in.

One night towards the end of our holiday, as I was just starting to lather up, I heard a scream. I learned later that a huntsman the size of a young puppy had dropped from the dangling, fly-spotted lightbulb overhead and landed neatly on my mother's head. Feeling a disturbance, she'd brushed her crown, sending the spider frisbee-ing across the crowded room, towards her naked children.

It landed with a small thud on the ground, bristled its abundant follicles at them, and began striding around the room as if it owned it, creating mayhem in its substantial wake.

Sarah had and still has a particular aversion to spiders. It's a vocal aversion. There's flapping, and stamping and shrill, panicked, death-is-on-the-doorstep style screaming. The spider must have been between her and the door so there was no escape.

And in my family, for some reason, there was a rule that we did not kill spiders. There was only one thing she could do, so she did it. She screamed.

The contagion spread. My brother screamed, then started wailing. My mother was a farm girl with a generally phlegmatic temperament towards all creatures. She used to horrify us with tales of sheep's head soup and crumbed lamb's brain.

But she too felt the fear of this particular spider. She started saying "Oo, Oo, Oo", with a rising tone of panic.

It was, perhaps, this most of all that alarmed me, for I was still in the shower. My view of the mayhem was obscured by the curtain. I had no idea what was going on. It could be wolves. Vampires. Grendel the man-eating monster. Some psychopath with a knife. My whole family, it appeared, was being devoured alive, from the toes up, and I was to be the final, dripping, morsel.

"What's going on?" I yelled, backing into the corner of the shower and trying not to pee.

"Sp - Sp - Sp," my sister quivered hysterically. "Spider!", shouted mum.

Having sown panic in the bathroom proper, the enormous creature sauntered towards the shower cubicle. I didn't particularly want to see what was going on, but even so, there was no way I was moving towards this mythical creature. So I cowered harder, covering my vulnerable parts, imagining some gargantuan arachnid sucking the juice out of my family as I stood waiting.

And then I saw it. The spider lifted its paddle-pop stick forepaws and began climbing the lip of the shower to maximum eerie effect. I saw first one fore-foot, then another appearing over the lip, searching for purchase. Or flesh. Then I, also, started to scream.

The last thing I remember is its 400-odd eyes rising above the lip of the shower cubicle and fixing me with its glare.

After that, things go a little blank.

Did I vault the creature and run to relative safety? Did my mother, sensibly, fetch a broom? Or did I simply pass out, to be revived later? Memory does not serve.

We all survived.

Unlike our habit of going to the beach. Many years later I found out that Sarah was caught that summer in one of Broulee's rips. She managed to attract attention as she bobbed below the surface, not waving, drowning.

Dad – himself not the strongest swimmer – plunged in, and with the help of another beachgoer, dragged her to safety.

That stretch of water, it turned out, could be treacherous. Rips, sandbars and unexpectedly deep holes could quickly form underfoot that made it a difficult prospect for once-a-year visitors like us.

So the next summer we took to the mountains. We didn't return to the coast until we were well into our teens; and then at rather more upmarket housing.

History does not relate what happened to the spider. No doubt, with nothing large enough to be its natural predator, it lived to a sour, malevolent old age.