Shipping your stuff to Oz, International Removals

There's lots of international removal companies out there who will do the removal/shipping of all your stuff to oz, we got 3 quotes, with two of the quotes sending someone out to appraise what size container we would need. For a 40ft shipping container we got quotes ranging from 5 to 7 thousand pounds.

A 20 ft container is also available or you can apparently even share containers if you have less things to ship.

The quote included doing the packing, transfer to the boat, shipping over and delivery at the other end to our house. (It didnt matter that we didnt know where we were going to live in Brisbane, just knowing the city was enough).

Some tips about the packers, do not think of them as intelligent human beings, think of them as packing machines who will pack everything in their way. They need to be supervised or you will find they have packed house plants, and even bins full of rubbish. (just 2 of the things ours managed to pack while our backs were turned).

There's strict quidelines as to what you can bring into Australia, no wicker, no plants, no food, no seeds, The packers will be aware of these guidelines and will ignore them completely.

The packing took about 4 days. (for a 5 bed house). As well as boxing everything all the furniture is wrapped in cardboard coated bubble wrap. It was all loaded onto one lorry then on the last day it was moved across to the container on the back of another lorry. (As seen in pic above)

When your container arrives in Australia it will undergo a customs inspection (costing several hundred pounds, the removal company UK side said this may or may not be required and its down to luck, on the OZ side they told me its always required as theres always a customs check), you will be required to show receipts for anything you have bought in the past 12 months(you will be charged VAT for anything that you declare to be new), you are also required to declare any alcohol so you can be charged.

According to the Australian side removal company the fact that everything had been professionally packed meant the customs inspection would be very quick, the customs officials tend to concentrate on owner packed containers.

Our possessions were put on a lorry on the 2nd May and arrived at our new home 2nd July. with a couple of weeks in Customs (mainly waiting for our destination address to become empty).