Weirdness at the washing line and elsewhere

While hanging out some washing on our Hills hoist this morning I found some strange material on the washing line.
The line is standard thickness twisted wire (measuring off a tape, about 3mm diameter).  Taking that as a benchmark the 'seeds' are about 0.67mm x 0.54mm.  I also noted that the 'strings' seem to glisten as they catch the sunlight (this can be picked up if the image is clicked to increase size).

My options for the nature of this were:
  1. fungal hyphae and fruiting body; or
  2. some form of plant material; or 
  3. something do do with invertebrate animals.
I then noted a bit of spider web in a nearby angle of the line where it meets one of the arms of the hoist.  So I wondered it they were spider eggs.  However my spider reference (Spiders by Barbara York Main) says that spiders tend to wrap their eggs in cocoons.

Any other suggestions welcome.

The next day I found several clumps of small structures on a Eucalyptus leaf.
They seemed be like mussel shells, but clearly were not.  On scraping one off the leaf and turning it over ...
... it was clearly hollow inside.  Presumably whatever was in there - a larva of some form?-  had gone somewhere else.  Again, any ideas welcome.




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