IdefixOnTour

Australia has very rigid regulations to protect the continent from alien plants and animals. In the first few weeks in Western Australia we have seen many programmes to kill foxes and wild cats which have been introduced into Australia by previous settlers and are damaging the environment.

Many small native animals have been extinguished by these predators.

One of the rules to bring in a car from overseas is that it has to be clean, clean as in new! Now, our car was fairly clean because it is new but one drive on the road, and dirt settles on the chassis. Our greatest worry was how do we get a clean car in a container during the Swiss winter. Snow, rain and ice does not keep your car clean. Working on the car in the cold is no fun either.

With a lot of help from Hoesche and the facilities we were able to use at his work place, cleaning the car was relatively easy. Hoesche and Agi needed ‘only’ a couple of hours (I was the onlooker..). The Sunday at the end of February had clear blue skies and it was 20 degrees with the sun shining. What is luck?

We parked the car overnight 20 kilometers away from the washing place and loaded Dirk and Gitta’s Bremach and ours in a container in Niederglatt. By rail it was sent to Antwerp and then shipped to Singapore, where it was unloaded and loaded on a smaller vessel (a feeder) for transshipment to Fremantle. All in all it was about 8 weeks in transit.

In the mean time we dissolved our lives in Switzerland and said goodbye to most of our family, friends and other special people. A series of pictures taken, and stolen from, by Miriam are in our Photo Album (Up, Up and Away). Just a few degrees too cold, the evening at the Fischerhuette was very good and special for us.

With two flight via Singapore Airlines through Singapore we arrived in Perth. Except for a squabble I had with a women who wanted to occupy four seats on the long haul to Singapore, the plane was only half-full, the flights were uneventful and smooth.

Within two hours after arriving in Perth we were in the cabin we booked in advance on the Fremantle Village Caravan Park.

The vessel arrived one day after us in Fremantle. So far so good. It then took us a week to get hold of our car. The dark machinations of the agent, customs and quarantaine offices were and are not clear to us. Dirk and Gitta were very agitated about our agent (Fracht AG) but were in the end as relieved as we were, when we finally got our cars. All in all the physical inspection by customs, quarantaine and the Vehicle Examination Center took less then two hours. Getting a number and some other data,in a computer system somewhere, took many, many hours and phone calls longer.

The weather in the Perth area was a lot worse then what we expected. Standing at a container depot in the rain watching grown men playing with containers like it is Lego is boring at a certain moment. We both suffered from colds in the first weeks. Agi was coughing all the time and we drove North towards better wheather much faster as planned.

Ambrose Gwinett Bierce - “PASSPORT, n. A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special reprobation and outrage.”