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April 23, 2005
Red Tape Aussie Style
So I was thinking that the worst red-tape we're going to come against is in Indonesia, but it seems the Aussies are pretty hot in this department too. Our beautiful Current Designs kayaks are, at the time of writing, sitting in a wharehouse just a few hundred metres from where we are located with Moksha at the Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Association. But the Customs Division here in Darwin won't let us work on them before re-exporting them out to Dili in East Timor.
There's a grey area in the guidelines that states that if we were to have the kayaks in our possession when we entered into Australia we would be allowed temporary access to work on them. If they'd wanted to help out, Customs could have interpreted the guidelines in such a manner as to allow us temporary access. But when the big cheese upstairs at the Customs House initially said no, it remained no, even after being explained the nature of the what the boats were to be used for (i.e. they wouldn't be sold here in Oz). Even a customs agent called up the cheese on our behalf and tried to reason with him, but there was no budging.
At least in Indonesia we'd be able to hand over $100 as a 'donation to the one-legged customs veterans fund', and get ahold of our kayaks.
So what does this mean? Well, without being able to see the kayaks properly and work on them we'll have to guess the materials we'll need to fit them out in Dili, which I've been told doesn't carry much in the way of hardware needed for a 2,600 mile expedition by kayak. We can make an educated guess as to what these materials will be, and how much to take up there in Moksha, but there will inevitably be things we can't foresee. And chances are it will be something incredibly small and annoying - common as mud anywhere else in the world but nowhere to be found in Dili - like a piece of string.
Posted on April 23, 2005 8:02 AM