Starting the ball of bureaucracy rolling.

Having made the decision to ship Trevor home at the end of the trip, we’ve spent the last couple of months waiting in anticipation for his scheduled arrival date of the 22^nd of May. Over the last few days Ben’s been making some enquiries as to what we’d have to do to actually retrieve him, so having emailed through copies of a few things such as our Carnet and copies of our Bill of Lading, the next step was for Ben and I to make the trip out to Customs House at Tullamarine to start the ball of bureaucracy rolling. We made the trip out there this afternoon (May 21^st) and after waiting at one end of the room to have our Carnet stamped back into Australia, we took a numbered ticket and queued up at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry down the other end of the room. It seemed a little odd to be sent to such a department about the shipment of a car, but apparently their services extend to all quarantine matters. We’d come prepared with copies of our passports (Ben’s and mine as the names on the shipping documents and Denner’s as the named owner of the car), our original Carnet, the originals and copies of our Bill of Lading and various unnecessary car documents such as registration, just in case. We sat twiddling our thumbs while someone took our documents away for a while, after which we were asked for the arrival date and the port of entry so a quarantine inspection booking could be organised, for which we had to pay $105. A pile of papers including our own original documents were slid across the desk to us and we were sent on our way.

Tomorrow Ben will visit the Maersk office (the company we’ve shipped with) to drop of our Bill of Lading which is the document issued at the port of exit with the details of the shipment and where/whom the cargo should be unloaded to (us). When that’s taken care of all we have to do is wait for our quarantine inspection and unless we missed some dirt on the body of the car, or something else that will require a hold up and of course some extra fees, we should be free to drive off.

We found out this afternoon that the ship Trevor’s on has already been to Perth. It’s hard to imagine that he’s actually already been to Australia and that hopefully within a few days will be in our possession.

One Car on a Ship.

Now that we're back in Melbourne (except Denner who decided to stay in London for a while), settling back into life as somewhat normal people, obviously there isn't much more to report on here. The only thing still left is the arrival of Trevor, our trusty and much-loved Toyota 4Runner who is currently on a ship somewhere in the Indian Ocean, scheduled to arrive in Melbourne on the 22nd of May. You can find details about the cost of this on the Trip Costs page if you're interested, which will be up-dated when he arrives to include whatever costs we have to pay on this end, and of course any stories about the process.

We’ve had a lot of enquiries about whether “4 Guys in a Car: The Book” might be written, so I’m happy to report that my project for the next while is in fact writing it. We’ll keep everyone updated on any progress on that as it goes, but hopefully in a few months it will be lining book shelves for everyone to enjoy.