Alecia and I arrived back in Australia at about 10 AM yesterday. I had a few issues getting back into the country. I left on a British passport, which I thought was fine, but apparently it’s not. Because I’m an Australian citizen I can’t get any sort of re-entry visa in my passport to show the immigration people that I’m a ridgy-didge Aussie who’s allowed to get back into the country. The idea is, if you’re an Australian citizen you use an Australian passport. But no one told me this before I left. So when we left New Zealand for Australia, the girl at the Air New Zealand desk had to go and phone Canberra to make sure they’d let me back in the country. Then the immigration people at Brisbane airport had to do the same.

While I was waiting at Brisbane airport for the immigration supervisor to come back and tell me I was allowed in the country, I took a picture of me being an illigal immigrant. Apparently you’re not supposed to take photos in such a “high security” facility, so another woman came up and gave me a stern talking to, and told me to delete the image in front of her. My camera’s a bit broken, so I had to take my watch off and use the catch on the strap to poke the button that lets me delete pictures. I deleted it to her satisfaction and they let me in the country (after another stern talking to).

Moral of the story: I’m going to get an Australian passport before I go overseas again.

This entry was posted on Monday July 3rd, 2006 at 10:15 am and is filed under South American Adventuring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.