I always hear terrible things about Australian spiders--like everyone has to check their shoes before putting them on, or that poisonous spiders lurk in the mailboxes. We also hear that pythons are waiting around every corner to squeeze the life out of you AND that kangaroos roam your streets looking to punch people out. Is that really what its like?

About your water problems, you may want to consider a 'rain garden', which is a garden bed in a slight depression that is planted with thirsty plants. You make them 10 to 20 feet or so away from the house and direct your downspout into it. At the same time, your sump pump, which is in a hole in the crawl space where water would collect, can also pump water into this rain garden.

I don't think what you have going on under your house is that unusual for a dirt floor crawl space. You just need a little sump pump set up and your problem will be solved.

I had a dirt floor cellar in a century old house built on a rock foundation. Seriously, I mean a foundation made out of a pile of rocks. I never understood what stopped it from collapsing, but it stood for much more than a century so there is that. Animals, water, people, all flowed through it. We just had a homemade sump pump system in a bucket set into a small hole someone dug decades ago. When we lived there my husband dug a little channel in the dirt to ensure any water from the Spring melt would flow into the hole. Somehow we lived and despite how it sounds, it was a really nice house. :-P