Thursday, October 13, 2005

Things that cannot be shipped to Australia

Because I don't have that much stuff - my only furniture is a wallclock - I come way under the minimum for shipping companies to ship my stuff to Oz. I had heard that UPS doesn't ship personal effects, which left only USPS (United States Postal Service, in whom I do not have much faith) and excess baggage. But it turns out UPS does in fact allow personal effects to only a handful of countries, including Australia (but not NZ, go figure).

So I'm in the process of checking prices. Interestingly, there are a number of items which may not be shipped, some which make perfect sense, others not so much.

Things that cannot be shipped to Australia:
  • human remains, firearms, live animals, ivory - all fair enough
  • smoked salmon - huh?
  • knives and daggers - fair enough too, but I still think it's unfair that my nunchucks were confiscated off me last time I passed through Melbourne
  • shoes are allowed, but must be permanently marked stating country of origin and material
  • straw - strictly prohibited
  • any goods bearing the name "ANZAC"
  • counterfeit credit cards - duh
  • novelty erasers
  • used bedding
  • and the list goes on, obviously...

Hmm, after all that it seems that UPS only does air shipping, not sea shipping. So good old post office it is then. Who have taken two months to finally start forwarding my mail from my last address...

R.

[edit: added "to" to the title, now the Editter's comment makes no sense, jiji]