sparkley23

I have been offered by a friend of a friend (who runs an international courier service) to have my stuff (approx 10 T-Cartons) sent by air to Oz for free. Sounds like a good plan right? Maybe, but perhaps not as easy as using one of these door to door everything included options. They will literally just get my stuff on the plane for free (they usually send printed matter so a bit different for them). But hey I'm not complaining, its free!

I will have to provide my own T cartons, own insurance and pay and arrange for customs clearance myself. I’m sure I can sort out buying the T-Cartons and insurance pretty easily and will just rent a big estate car/van for a couple of days when I’m out there to get it all from the airport to my new place. My concern is the customs bit. How on earth do I go about doing this and what are the likely costs? I won’t be bringing anything which will need quarantine (just hockey stick and a couple of pairs of shoes which I will give a good clean and some wooden picture frames which are varnished.) Do the airport charge storage fees if I can’t go to collect my stuff the exact day the plane arrives? I guess it’s a bit different flying stuff to shipping it as the plane will be unloaded straight away.

I find it strange how you can post something to Australia and not have to pay the customs people to do their job but if you fly a couple of boxes over you have to pay them? What’s the difference!?