I’ll tell you what, the Byford Quarantine Station in Perth gets busy damn quickly

As I mentioned in a previous entry, we’ve decided to use Airpets Oceanic to ship our two cats from the UK to Perth and the last time we spoke with them we were looking at early December before we could get the place.

Since applying for the appropriate permits for both cats and confirming a place, we are now looking at 20th December before a place becomes available.

So, it goes without saying that we snapped this place up. Both Cats are booked onto a Quantas flight for the 19th December flying to Perth via Singapore. In the meantime, if anyone drops out at Airpets and a spot becomes available we’ll try and get first refusal on that.

It looks like there will be an element of boarding involved at the Airpets cattery before the boys fly out. We want to be out there well before Christmas, the sudden climb in air fare prices during the Christmas period is the main driver for an early departure so it looks like the furry felines will have a 2 – 3 week stay before their flight departs to Australia.

Our experience with Airpets so far has been really good. After the pain of dealing with the Crapifax (Halifax) estate agents for the sale of our house, Airpets have been true to their word and have kept us in the loop, making regular contact by telephone to give us updates as and when we need them. I’ll make sure that I do a full review of our experiences with Airpets when we all finally get to Perth.

As for the house, well I’m pleased to say that things appear to be going well, yes that’s right, things finally appear to be going Ok for a change!

The Mr of the buying party has had all of his references back from his employer to complete the bridging loan / second mortgage application that they are going to take out to buy our house. The surveyors fees have been paid and the surveyors have now been instructed. We are trying to arrange another visit from the buyers this weekend,. We have quite a bit of furniture we’ll be leaving behind so we’d like to give them first refusal.

We plan to include most of the furniture with the house sale. The kitchen will include the dishwasher, washing machine etc, Ikea’s finest wardrobes will be included in the bedrooms and anything they don’t want will probably go to Catholic housing or a similar charity.

I guess we are working on the basis that when we excepted this second offer, it was a few thousand more then the original offer we excepted when we were messed around by the buyer who couldn’t get a mortgage.

The difference in the two offers far exceeds any cash we would have got had we sold the furniture so we’re counting ourselves lucky in that regard.

Also whilst talking about selling stuff, the young lad who lives next door to us with his mum and dad wants to buy the car off the missus. He’s always liked it apparently so assuming we get a half decent offer for it, this will be one less thing for us to worry about!

Today is a pretty key day for me personally as I’m going to give notice at work (or at least verbally confirm when my last day will be which I’m aiming to be in about six weeks time).

Originally, I wasn’t going to hand my notice in until the contracts were exchanged on the house, if we were to do this (and the contracts took the expected 5 – 6 week timescales to complete), then after working my one months notice I’d be looking at Mid November before I could leave work.

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I’ve added quite a few (pre-written) articles to our about Australia section today. Although quite a few of these articles are probably targeted a little more at the folks going on Holiday to Australia as opposed to those looking to emigrate, they still make some very interesting ready and paint a very pretty picture of Australia as a whole.

Happy reading..

On the house front. No updates from the Halifax since my last update although still not particularly concerned at this stage. We marked the house as sold with the little house company. A great concept and perhaps we may have got a commission free sale had we found them sooner but hey, if were going to spend £2000 shipping the cats to Australia what’s another £135??? A lot I know but in the bigger scheme of things…

Anyway, off to phone the Halifax for another update, who’s for putting money that they completely ignore my call back request!

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Well, the cats are sorted kind of. We decided to opt for a company called Airpets Oceanic based in Staines Middlesex.

We always knew sending our two cats to Australia wasn’t going to be cheap and the transport service provided by Airpets was pretty much what we expected.

Airpets will charge us £1469.00 to transport our two furry felines to Perth but within this cost they provide quite a good service.

To summarise, our £1469 will get us:

Freight (a spot in the plane)
I.A.T.A Air Travel Containers
Airline Handling Feeds
Delivery to Airport
Application for Import Permit
Application for Quarantine Space at Perth
Application for Ministry of Agriculture Export Certificate
96 hour paraciticide
Sealing of Air Kennels by Airport Vet
and a days boarding prior to departure.

Having spent the time to apply for our Visa’s I know that we could have pretty easily done a large part of this ourselves. However at this moment in time, with so much stuff going on it makes sense for us to get ‘the boys’ booked in as its one less thing to worry about.

On top of the £1469 to get the cats to Australia, we’ll also need to pay for a months boarding in Perth so lets call it a straight £2000 to get the cats there….gosh!

Now lifes never straoght forward is it so now we have a slight complication. When we initially enquired approx 10 days ago, we were told that we’d be looking at early to Mid November to secure a place in Perth for our cats. Now we’re looking at early December!

This could be a complication for us as potentially, if the house sale goes through in the timescales that it should, we might (Ok its very likely that we might) end up having to move out to Australia before the cats.

Airpets could pick up from West Yorkshire but they would charge approx £400 for the privilege, they do offer boarding though @ £15 per day for two cats sharing so worst case we may need to send them early, board them until their spot becomes available and then ship them out.

Ideally, we’d like to keep this boarding time to a minimal as were mindful that they will need to stay in quarantine for another 30 days when they arrive in Perth.

We could fly them to Sydney and then get an internal flight from Perth but we feel that the whole flying thing will probably be one of the more stressful parts of the whole journey so want to keep the time in the air to a minimal (if you can call 24 hours minimal).

Eitherway, pick up or boarding? This is going to have to be a decision we make once we know when the house is finally sold and when we are all likely to be made homeless.

Oh well, we’ll see how Airpets fair. So far the service seems very professional, the people we have spoken to seem very switched on. Lets just hope they do the best job for our boys

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Well, dare I say it but things almost appear to be happening.

Spoke to the Halifax yesterday who are still beyond useless (not giving us the promised updates resulting in a number of ignored call-back requests). However it seems that we are now progressing with our latest buyers which is the best bit of positive news we’ve had from the Halifax for some time.

All of the mortgage paperwork has now been completed and the survey fee’s have been paid. The surveyors will not be instructed by the Halifax until the Mr of the buying party has his employees reference back. This is pretty standard practice apparently and is expected to be back by early next week.

The SOLD sign has been ordered and is expected any day. Daft though this may sound, this is probably one of the things we’ve been longing for the most.

I know getting the sold sign doesn’t make everything legally binding and it doesn’t mean the house is really going to see. Its just psychological I guess.

Driving around the corner every day when I get home from work to be confronted by our ‘For Sale’ really gets you down after a while. Being presented by a nice SOLD sign will really give us the boost we need to get us to the next level

The fact that the survey fees have already been paid is a good sign as this represents quite a big sum of money. As our home is just under 10 years old I hope that the survey doesn’t show anything up. If it does we’ll need to fork out the cash to get everything sorted. If its structural it should still be covered by our NHBC certificate but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

In other news, we’ve had a quote from a company (which appears quite reputable) called airpets for our two cats. It looks like all in all its going to cost us just over £2k to fly the cats out to Perth and house them for the 30 days they’ll need to remain in quarantine. Its a lot of money but we couldn’t leave the boys in Blighty, they are part of the family after all.

Anyway, fingers crossed and lets see what the next few days bring.

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Well, its been a while but thought it may be useful to post an update on what’s going on.

The house is still up for sale but alas, we have had no joy in flogging the property yet. Its been 8 weeks since we first assigned the Halifax as our agent and to be honest the service has been terrible.

I have never dealt with a more reactive company in my life, they don’t seem to do anything unless you actively chase them up. We have had a number of people who have looked slightly interested but then we have had no further feedback.

Phoning the Halifax branch has led to some feedback but that’s only after the staff have gone away (when asked) to collect the feedback which they should have proactively collected in the first place.

Just to add the icing on the cake, we’ve had members of staff crying down the phone because they are stressed. Its been crazy.

Anyway, we’ve got a few more days with the Halifax before our minimum contract period runs out. When it does we’ll be taking our business elsewhere whilst dropping the house price by a couple of percentage points to see if this improves the amount of interest shown.

When selling your property, one tip is to play on the lack of the chain your in. At the end of the day, when you sell your house your ready to move as you don’t need to find another property to buy (not in this country anyway!). Use this to your advantage, although we haven’t sold up yet, many viewers have commented on how good a thing this actually is as it enables potential buyers to be more flexible with moving dates.

In other news, we said our first goodbyes to two close members of our family last week. Holly and Chloe the Chinchillas went to their new home (An old boss and a good friend from work).

Were taking the cats with us to Australia but it wouldn’t be fair to take the ‘chins’. Being native to the Andes mountains in South America means that they may not have adapted to well to the 40 degree heat of Western Australia. We’ve had them for about 10 years now and it was sad to say goodbye. But we know they have gone to a good home (with another 5 Chinchillas!) So I’m confident that we have done the right thing.

On the plus side it means we don’t need to lug a big Chinchilla cage down the side of the house every time we show someone around the place
Hopefully my next update will be with more upbeat news!

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Perth Sports

Perth is very conducive to an outdoors lifestyle, and this is reflected in the wide variety of sports available to citizens of the city. Perth was host to the 1962 Commonwealth Games and also the 1987 America’s Cup defence (based at Fremantle).

Australian Rules Football is a popular spectator sport in Perth, with over 1,030,000 attending WAFL and AFL matches, more than any other sport in the state. [1]

Interestingly, Perth has the strongest regional (State/County/Province) field hockey competition in the World. There are many field hockey clubs for children, men, women and veterans (over 40 year of age). Western Australia (especially given it only has 10% of Australia’s population) hugely contributes to the national Australian men’s and ladies’ hockey teams which have both been winners of Olympic Gold Medals.

Perth is home to several teams which are part of national sporting competitions:

Two teams in the Australian Football League (AFL): the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Football Club (the “Fremantle Dockers”). The “home” of Australian Rules football in Perth is Subiaco Oval.

A state cricket team, known as the Western Warriors.

A football (soccer) team, Perth Glory, which is a part of the newly re-formed soccer competition known as the A-League. In the past Perth Glory have been a relatively successful team by winning the last two NSL (National Soccer League) seasons (2002-03 & 2003-04).

A team in the National Basketball League, the Perth Wildcats, who are one of the most successful teams in the league’s history. However, the popularity of basketball as a spectator sport in Australia has sharply declined since the early 1990s.

A rugby union team, the Western Force, in the Super 14 competition. Perth also hosts the “Perth Gold” team in the Australian Rugby Shield competition. Rugby league briefly maintained a Perth team in the national competition (1995-1997), known as the Western Reds (Perth Reds in the Super League season)

In 2002, Perth hosted the World Lacrosse Games, which included the World Lacrosse Championships (won by the United States), the Australian Youth Lacrosse Championship, a Masters (35+ year old), Grandmasters (45+), and International Open Championships.

The 1991 and 1998 FINA World Championships were held in Perth.

Every year Perth hosts the Hopman Cup, an international tennis tournament, generally in the first week of January. This is held at the Burswood Dome, and presents Perth on an international stage.

Perth is also home to the annual Avon Descent whitewater event, and the annual Rally Australia.

Every summer the Australian cricket team plays a test match and one one day international matches at the WACA ground. Of the two touring teams for the one day internationals one will play two games the other will play once.

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We have two cats which we’ll be taking with us to Australia. In reality it would be a thousand times cheaper to buy two new cats when we get out there but the cats have been part of the family for a number of years now so they’ll be making the trip down under with us.

A government department called AQIS which stands for Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, are the folks in Australia that deal with animal imports.

They have some really useful information and forms which need to be completed if your taking your dog or cat with you to Australia. The more applicable sections of the site can be found by clicking here (page opens in new window) however I thought it’d be useful to document the main steps associated with taking your dog or cat to Australia with you.

Cats and dogs may only be imported to Australia from approved countries. Conditions for importing cats and dogs from approved countries vary depending on the country of export. These conditions may involve a longer quarantine period, restricted breeds or similar.

Fortunately for us, the UK is seen as a pretty ‘clean’ country from a pet perspective with only New Zealand being viewed better where no quarantine periods are required at all.

The UK is classed as a Category 2 country so and dogs and cats being brought into Australia need to spend 30 days quarantine in Australia before you can pick them up and take them to your new home.

Other Category two countries include (long list this): Bahrain, Barbados, Cyprus, Falkland Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia (includes Tahiti, Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, Austral Islands, Tuamotu Islands, Gambier Islands), Guam, Hawaii, the Republic of Ireland, Japan, Malta, Mauritius, New Caledonia, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan and Vanuatu.

I’ll cover both cats and dogs as I think these will be the animals that you’ll most likely want to take with you if your going to emigrate into Australia. There are a number of steps that you’ll need to go through prior to sending your beloved pet to the other side of the world.

Step one, you need to make sure that your dog or cat is eligible for export to Australia:

Your Dog or cats must have been continuously living in the UK or similar for a minimum of 6 months immediately prior to shipment. Your pet must not have been under quarantine restrictions in the 30 days prior to export and your pet must be at least 12 weeks old at time of export.

If your dog or cat is pregnant, they must not be more than 6 weeks pregnant nor be suckling young at time of export and finally certain breeds of dogs cannot be exported into Australia. These breeds tend to be the more fierce breeds such as:

Dogo Argentino, fila Brazileiro, Japanese tosa’s, Pit bull terrier, American pit bull or the Presa Canaria.

I know that many of these breeds make great and loving family pets but I’m afraid the Aussies don’t see it that way so If you have any of these breeds then unfortunately you’ll need to leave them at home.

In addition, under animal hybrids e.g. Bengal cats or wolf crosses are not eligible for import, unless they are proven to be 5th generation or more away from any pure-bred non-domestic ancestor.

Step two, your dog or cat has to be micro chipped for identification purposes.

The chip must be able to be read by an Avid, Trovan, Destron or other ISO compatible reader (your vet will be able to confirm this). Fortunately we’ve had both of our cats done. Pop over to your local vets to get this sorted. I think for our cats it cost about £25 each.

Step three, Get your permit.

Your pet will not be allowed to enter Australia without a valid AQIS permit to import. The AQIS import permits are only valid for 6 months from the day that AQIS receives your application so make sure you get your timing right and don’t apply years in advance. The AQIS import permit will be sent to you immediately following approval by AQIS of your application.

For those of you on a tighter timescale, you can ask for the import permit to be faxed, a copy of the import permit may be used. A permit will be sent to the person/company that you nominate as the “exporter” on your application form so if you’re using one of the companies specialising in pet export then make sure you provide their details on the form.

Keep in mind that even though you will have received your permit to import your pet into Australia, it does not guarantee a space at your preferred Quarantine Station so Bookings must be made for your pet/s at these stations. There are currently three main quarantine stations covering the whole of Australia:

Eastern Creek Quarantine Station which covers Sydney and the New South Wales regions, Spotswood Quarantine Station which covers Melbourne, Victoria and Byford Quarantine Station which covers Perth and the rest of Western Australia.

Step 4, Your pets health check

In a similar way to us humans, your pet also needs to undergo health checks by a government approved body before being allowed into the country.

An Official Veterinarian is a government officer usually employed by the government veterinarian administration (e.g. in the UK – Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs). These official Veterinarians generally do not work in private practice but are able to sign certificates on behalf of the government’s veterinary administration. Again, your local vet may be the best port of call for this. Although they may not be able to do all the checks themselves, they should be able to point you in the right direction

Step 5, make your pets travel arrangements.

You can only get your pet into Australia through the following airports, Mascot Airport in Sydney (New South Wales), Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne (Victoria) or Perth Airport in Perth (Western Australia).

AQIS does not place any restrictions or the airline you choose to use, however your pet must travel as “Manifested Cargo” (not in the cabin) and in an International Air Transport Association (IATA) approved container for dogs and cats.

Please note you will be charged an additional fee of $25 if your pet arrives in Australia outside business hours (8:00am – 4:00 PM). You are also required to seek the approval of the relevant quarantine station for after hours pick-ups prior to import.

Step 6 – Get your pet vaccinated.

Vaccinations must be valid for the entire period spent in quarantine in Australia. If vaccinations expire prior to your pet’s release from quarantine they may be re-vaccinated at the owner’s expense.

Dogs must be vaccinated against distemper, infectious hepatitis, canine parvovirus (parvo), para-influenza and Bordetella bronchiseptica (kennel cough).

If the Bordetella bronchiseptica (kennel cough) is not available in the country of origin, dogs may be vaccinated for kennel cough on arrival in Australia at the owner’s expense. Note: Vaccinations against Leptospira interrogans.var. canicola is not recommended within 6 months of export as your pet’s high antibody response will most likely result in it being ineligible for export to Australia.

Cats must have been vaccinated against feline enteritis (feline panleucopenia, feline distemper), rhinotracheitis and calicivirus.

Step 7 Final Vet Checks.

Prior to sticking your pet on a plane (normally less then a week before) your pet needs to have some final health checks. The first step is normally a visual inspection; if everything’s OK then Veterinary Certificate A will be completed.

On the day of your pet’s departure, the final checks will be made by a vet, the result of which will be the completion Veterinary Certificate B.

The Official Veterinarian who signs Veterinary Certificate B records the identification number of the seal on Veterinary Certificate B, and physically seals your pet into the cage. After this has been completed your cat or dog would not be released from its cage until it gets to Australia.

A water container is fixed inside the cage with an external funnel with a hose leading into the water container to allow water to be replenished without opening the cage. Your pet would then be put onto the plane at which point its new adventure really begins.

Not that straight forward is it? Well, thankfully AQIS have all the information on their website which you can find by clicking here (link opens in new window). There are also numerous pet ‘migration agents’ who will manage the whole process for you (for a fee).

Shipping yourself, your cat and/or your dog to Australia was never going to be a straight forward process but I’m sure you’ll all appreciate being back together at the other side.

We have added a new forum which includes a forum specifically for folks looking at taking their pets with them to Australia. Click Here to view our Taking your Pets to Australia Forum

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