Anybody that’s shipped a vehicle into Australia before knows the pain of quarantine cleaning and many people seem to have heard the stories !

Customs aren’t a problem, that’s “just” paperwork, the quarantine service though is a pain. Essentially the vehicle has to be spotless for understandable reasons, it’s all about protecting the very ecology that we’re going to experience. Sometimes though it feels like you are fighting a losing battle. You can spend weeks cleaning every inch of the vehicle over and over and you can almost guarantee that quarantine will still insist on another clean and in some cases that cleaning process is so thorough they damage the vehicle in the process.

So, clean the vehicle, clean it again, clean it yet more BUT if you expect to have to pay to have it cleaned for another day when it gets there 8 weeks later and plan around that life will be a lot easier. If it does get through quarantine without paying for it to be washed consider that a bonus !

In a perfect world we’d drive it there but, unfortunately, that would take too long and cost way too much money, not to mention the potential political problems along the way !

The trip is going to be limited by time available off work and money. The hope is that my employer will allow me to take unpaid leave for the duration of the trip but the reality is with no money coming in and spending money on fuel and food we need to put as much time as we can into the actual trip.

We’ll be shipping the vehicle in a container at least 8 weeks before we intend to fly out to meet it in Sydney. It will probably be a 20ft container with just the 90 and a spares kit in it although if anyone wants to share a 40ft container, please get in touch ! Reducing the cost of the container and shipping by adding a second vehicle would help extend our trip by as much as two weeks. We’ll have to take the roof tent off to ship it as the combo would be too tall to fit inside a standard height container.