|
|
|
|
Australia at last! You may know that Australia started out as a penal colony for the English Empire - I very nearly joined that tradition on my entry into the country. They hand out an entry card filled with questions that must be answered. Then you turn the card in to the customs agents and they decide by your answers if your baggage needs to be shown further attention. I did all right with the "did you bring any food?" and the "do you have any items of animal origin?" and "have you visited a farm in the past 30 days?" but when it asked about "plant material," it never occurred to me that it was referring to my wheel. <sigh> So my bags were sent thru the X-ray machine, where suspicious wooden objects were discovered and my bags all had to be searched. The customs agent examined all of my many drugs carefully, checking labels and asking me my doctors' names. Then the quarantine agent came and started examining the wooden objects in my luggage. At this point in time I didn't realize how much trouble I was in, but it was soon made clear to me. The agents asked me again if I had packed my own bags and if I knew the contents of them. "Of course," I say. THUD went the other shoe: "Then why did you not declare the wooden objects in your luggage?" I always considered myself to be fairly bright, but this moment proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was badly mistaken in that belief. I had absolutely no answer, other than to plead stupidity! I had carefully watched the video on the plane about what was not allowed into Australia and they clearly showed live plants and a carved wooden mask. Neither of these objects brought my highly compressed, glued and sealed PLYWOOD spinning wheel to mind. Before my trip I had emailed the customs offices of both New Zealand and Australia, asking about my spinning wheel and my sheepskin. Both offices replied that both items were OK, but to be sure to declare my sheepskin. Neither had anything further to say about the spinning wheel - perhaps it didn't strike them as a "wooden object" either. Whatever - I was strongly warned by customs and allowed to enter without being arrested or fined. If I ever travel again, I'm going to have someone else fill in those pesky cards for me! |