To all Foreign yachts arriving in Australia with a pet on board

We understand that this subject has been discussed extensively already but it seems that lots of non-Australian sailors crossing the Pacific still believe the mandatory 3-month quarantine applies for their pet as well.

This has caused lots of stress on some of our friends, some desperately tried to send frozen blood samples to AQIS from Tahiti which appeared to be impossible because of the imposed time frame. Others left their little companion of many years behind forever before reaching Australia.

The mandatory 3 months quarantine of your pet does NOT apply to you as long as you don’t have any plans to import your cat or dog into the country.

In this case, you won’t be allowed to berth your vessel in any marina, this might not be a problem since in our case there were no berths available anywhere at the time we visited. The Queensland quarantine officers seemed not to be aware of this despite clearly stating it on their own website.

See: http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis/avm/vessels/pets [BROKEN LINK]

Note that they wanted to charge us no less than AU$ 4000 to quarantine our cat in Sydney. We hired the services of a local ombudsman (free) to demonstrate they were wrong. Freddie (our cat) remained on board during our 8-month stay in Australia.

Hope that helps.

Denis & Maria

S/V THEIS

Lagoon 380

Phuket

Thailand