The incredible scientist who spent her life studying and caring for trapdoor spiders.
In the uncleared bushland surrounding the homestead where she lived with her parents and brothers, six-year-old Barbara noticed the holes in the ground made by trapdoor spiders.
“They inhabited the bush land around the farmhouse and the sheds,” Barbara York Main recalled in an interview with John Bannister of the University of Western Australia (UWA) historical society in 2012.
“I was interested in the small things — the insects were on a scale that I could relate to,” she said.
Dr York Main’s love of these small things and the bush would drive her to become one of the most extraordinary scientists in Australia.
She wrote *the* book on Australian spiders. An expert on trapdoors, she studied the world’s oldest spider for decades.
