The funnel‑web’s range begins here
The Australian Museum records the funnel-web's main range as running from this coast south to the Georges River, and this is its northern end. The museum also records where the spider lives: a silk-lined burrow, sheltered under logs or rocks, in a spot that keeps a cool and humid climate.
What this page says about the spider is the Australian Museum's record; the health lines are NSW Health's own, quoted from the pages linked in the footer.
Where the range starts, and what that means in a yard
The Central Coast is not an outpost on the edge of this spider's map. The museum puts the start of the range here, with the range running south to the Georges River and reaching west as far as Baulkham Hills at the southern end of that distribution.
There are records from the Blue Mountains and Wollongong as well, so the map is not a hard line on the ground.
The museum's account of the habitat is the practical part: a silk-lined burrow, sheltered under logs or rocks, in a place that keeps a cool and humid climate.
What it looks like, and what is mistaken for it
Sydney funnel-webs are shiny and dark, brown to black, with finger-like spinnerets, the silk-spinning organs, at the end of the abdomen. The males are the ones with a large mating spur, which projects from the middle of the second pair of legs.
One honest limit from the museum: by eye, this species and the Southern Sydney funnel-web are not easy to tell apart.
Behaviour is the more telling sign. Threatened, both species rear up and display their fangs, and the museum calls those fangs impressive. The Sydney Children's Hospitals Network puts it as funnel-web spiders being able to move very quickly, rearing up on their back legs, lunging and biting when threatened.
The museum also names the spiders most often mistaken for funnel-webs: mouse spiders, trapdoor spiders, and even the black house spider. A mouse spider is quick too, and will rear up and bite when it feels threatened, which is how it gets mistaken for a funnel-web.
How it gets near a house
It is the males that do the wandering, and that wandering brings them into backyards and suburban swimming pools, where the museum records that they can survive for hours.
They get into houses too, and then cannot get out. The wandering happens mostly in summer and autumn, when the males leave their burrows looking for females, which is why the encounters are seasonal rather than constant.
In the burrow itself, the museum records how the spider hunts: it sits just inside the entrance, and rushes out when something crosses the silken trip-lines it has laid around the outside.
On prevention, the network counts teaching a child to leave spiders alone among the best ways to avoid a bite, since a bite often comes when a spider is touched or picked up by accident. It adds that insect repellent can help keep spiders away but will not protect a person who is bitten.
What a bite does
The museum's record of the venom is sober: it carries a neurotoxin, which goes for the nervous system, and in the worst cases a bite can kill. It also records the outcome since antivenom: since antivenom arrived there have been no deaths from a bite.
The Sydney Children's Hospitals Network describes antivenom as a medication that is injected into the bloodstream, treating funnel-web bites by stopping the venom from working. It states that a funnel-web bite, or a bite from another big black spider, means hospital treatment for a child, because these bites can be life-threatening.
A bite: where the first aid actually is
This page does not set out first-aid steps in its own words, and it does not shorten them either: the steps are the official page's, whole. The NSW Poisons Information Centre's page on spider bites is where they are written out, and it is the page to open if a bite has happened.
The context the network gives is simple: Australia has many spiders, and some of them are venomous, and venom is a poison that gets into the bloodstream through a bite or a sting. Some are too small for their fangs to get through human skin, and some carry venom that harms only small animals.
The ticks on the same edge
The bush edge is tick country too. NSW Health records that ticks are parasites that feed on animal and human blood, and that they occur in humid, moist, bushy areas.
On what a bite means, NSW Health's account is balanced: ticks are known to inject toxins that cause local or mild irritation, and most tick bites cause little or no symptoms, while tick-borne diseases, tick paralysis and severe allergic reactions can pose serious health threats.
The tick-borne diseases it names for Australia are Australian tick typhus, also called spotted fever, along the coastal strip of eastern Australia from North Queensland to Victoria, and Flinders Island spotted fever, in Victoria, Tasmania and Flinders Island in Bass Strait. This coast sits on the first of those strips.
NSW Health lists the early symptoms of tick paralysis as rashes, headache, fever, flu-like symptoms, tenderness of lymph nodes, unsteady gait, intolerance to bright light, increased weakness of the limbs and partial facial paralysis. It records that tick typhus is treatable with antibiotics, while noting that fatalities have been known to occur.
The steps for a tick bite are not printed here either. They are set out on the NSW Poisons Information Centre's page on ticks, and the same rule as above holds: the source's words, or a link, never a paraphrase.
This guide keeps to one edge of the Coast, where the bush meets the fence: the northern end of the funnel-web's main range, and the humid, bushy country where ticks occur. The rest of the line, from the water's edge to the timber of the house, is where the other guides sit.