You could say that Arcadia Australia is just like any other festival in the country, except that they have the tiny addition of a 50-tonne mechanical spider robot that breathes fire and shoots lasers out of its eyeballs.

Having successfully crawled all over Glastonbury in the UK and sent arachnophobes into eternal hiding, Arcadia decided to bring the mechanical beast to Perth for a three-day music festival and an heinously enjoyable visual show. The spider – which is constructed from “repurposed military and industrial hardware including jet engines, afterburner units, customs scanning units, cranes and helicopter fuselages” – also has superpowers that allows it to expel 15 metre fireballs over us mere mortals.

Playing two days of Arcadia Australia was Alison Wonderland, the Aussie export who made a brief return for the event and a keynote speaker role at the Electronic Music Conference. We flew to the West Coast to hang out with Alison and our giant spider friend, and the whole experience was equal parts awesome and terrifying. Alison Wonderland will be back for festivals over the NYE period including Falls Festival and Field Day, but in the meantime, take a look at when went down at Arcadia.

Are your spidey senses tingling yet?