Contraband, apparently
b
“I wonder when the show to welcome us to the country will start,” said Bruce as they approached immigration.
b
“So do I,” said Fran. “What do you think it’ll be?”
b
“At the very least I’d expect a banner heralding our arrival,” Bruce replied. “And a troupe of Aborigines performing a traditional dance in our honour.”
b
“Well, quite,” said Fran. “After all, we’re not tourists this time. We’re here to become fair dinkum Aussies so I demand fireworks.”
b
Passport control
b
No dancers. No banner. Certainly no fireworks. Not even a welcome from the woman handling our passports. Couldn’t she see we had permanent residency? Come on, a bit of hospitality doesn’t hurt. But no, the visas we’d striven for more than two years to obtain were stamped without so much a smile.
b
“Next,” said the sour face of officialdom bluntly, turning her eyes to the next person in the queue without so much as a cursory glance to bid us on our way.
b
“Well, at least we’re here, Fran,” I said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
b
“It certainly has,” she said. “Here’s to our new life in Oz.”
b
A new life in quarantine…
b
“NOTHING TO DECLARE” said the green sign. Apart from the chopstick sets we’d picked up in a Bangkok market less than 24 hours earlier, there was nothing that fell foul Australian immigrations tough guidelines. Or so we thought.
b
“Look,” said Fran, pointing to our right. “Aren’t they the same as our cushions?”
b
I followed her finger to a photo montage of items travelers were forbidden from bringing into the country – fruits, vegetables, soiled farm equipment – all fair enough given Oz’s history of inadvertently destroying its own ecosystem through a combination of misguided initiative and base stupidity.
b
But then, sure enough, poking in at the back left, like a late arrival for a school yearbook photo, was the corner of a cushion not dissimilar to the pair we had lugged with great effort from Bangkok.
I made my way to one of the customs officials nearby and asked him what we should do.
b
“You’re gonna have to go and join the queues for quarantine over there I’m afraid, sir. These cushions are filled with a type of straw that has been known to harbour insects,” he said, indicating the swollen mass of crumpled long haul passengers and overladen trolleys, before adding, with more than a hint of foreboding: “The staff over there will tell you what your options are, sir.”
b
With that he ushered us haphazardly through the crowd of people lucky enough not to have bought cushions filled with insect-harbouring straw, made a couple of quick squiggles on our customs declaration form, and pulled apart one of the cords to allow us out of the queue.
b
One of his colleagues turned to him and said: “Where are these guys going?”
b
In a tone I felt should only be reserved for gun runners or drug mules rather than people carrying cushions filled with straw, he said simply: “Thai cushions.”
b
“Oh,” said the second official, nodding sagely. Then, with the faintest of sneers: “Thai cushions.” He turned briefly towards us as we struggled through the gap in the cordon, his eyes shouting what his mouth didn’t dare: “Bloody idiots.”
b
Gamma radiation
b
An hour and a half later, Bruce and Fran left the terminal without their cushions – and $60. The straw requires gamma radiation, apparently, and will be returned in a month. The damn things only cost $30, but after the effort they’d exerted finding them, bartering for them, buying them, lugging them from the sweltering Chatuchak Market back to the hotel, packing them and bringing them to Australia they couldn’t send them to their death.
b
In the absence of dancing natives and fireworks, their arrival in Australia was, in its own unexpected way, memorable.
[...] She needs a job in passport control. [...]