My parents are apparently coming to us for christmas, and are just looking at flights, but then i reminded them that they need visiting visa's. So where do they go to apply for the visa's? Plus they actually live in spain, so not sure if that makes a difference, as in where they need to apply.. any help would be good, thank you

This is the offical site http://www.eta.immi.gov.au/

They get the ETA visa instantly. Or their travel agent can also do it for them.

Good luck.


PS: just looking at the site it states from 27th October that EU Citizens will have to apply online via "eVisitor" instead of the usualy ETA way - all the details are there and you can use the normal ETA site until midnight 27th October, after that you'll have to use the new site.

Mikey

Thank you for that, i will inform them.

Oh, the ETA I think costs ($30 I think from memory), but the new “eVisitor visa” that is available for EU citizens from 28th October is free.

Info is on the same site.

Mikey

Try and get the airline / travel agent to do it. When I went online to get ETAs for family my dad got knocked back....no reason given....$20 still taken though! I got Singapore Airlines to do it for me - they ended up having to telex (yes they still do that!) Canberra who manually granted the ETA.

wow, i wouldn't have thought they would knock back a visiting visa. They aren't using a travel agent as such they generally just book direct to an airline. But thanks for the advise

DIAC do carry out random checks where they don't grant the ETA at once online but they get the applicant to phone them. Sometimes its completely random, sometims there maybe someone with the same name on a watch list. If your dad's wasn't granted the first time its possible that a call would have cleared up the problem, but maybe the travel agent didn't realise this.
Its best not to leave the ETA till the last minute just in case there is a hitch like that

Thanks for this info, I think you are the first to spot it?
I'll post a sticky thread about it