Quarantine at Australia's international airports and seaports

More than 8 million travellers land in
Australia each year; each traveller's
luggage is screened for items that could
bring in pests or disease.

Journeys past and present

When the Second Fleet sailed to Australia from England, one in four of the convicts and crew on board died before they got here. Only 750 landed at Sydney Cove, many helplessly ill. The trip took about 250 days.

Today a flight from England to Australia takes about 24 hours, and travel time from Asia and America is much less. Apart from jetlag, we expect to arrive safe and well.

We live in an age of travel and a country of travellers. Australians love to travel overseas. We also get millions of overseas tourists visiting each year. This means a huge task for Quarantine.

Quarantine and travellers

Here are just some of the quarantine tasks that happen at international passenger terminals around Australia each day:

• incoming luggage x-rayed to check for quarantine risk items
• interview passengers
• detector dogs sniff luggage from high-risk flights and passenger ships
• on-the-spot fines issued to passengers who don’t declare risk items
• check and clear arriving aircraft and cruise ships
• set traps for insects such as mosquitoes, which could carry diseases like yellow fever and malaria
• dispose of all quarantine waste.

Cruise ships bring about 100,000
passengers to Australia each year, and
all their luggage must be screened for
any materials harbouring exotic pests
or diseases.

Believe it or not...

Some people try to sneak live animals into Australia inside clothes or luggage. As well as endangering the animals, this could introduce diseases that could hurt our wildlife, farm animals and pets.

Quarantine finds some unusual items in luggage. Here are some of them:

• teacups made from llama feet
• baby pythons hidden in passenger’s trousers
• mangoes hidden under a woman’s armpits
• medicines made from wasps, bees, scorpions and spiders
• elephant poo
• live giant African snails
• 19 parrots packed in a suitcase.

Any items that pose a potential risk to Australia's plants, animals or people need to be inspected and possibly treated to make them safe—or destroyed if the risk is too high.

Activities

Plan an overseas trip. Include in your plan: your travel itinerary; a list of key attractions you want to visit; items to pack; any vaccinations you will need for the places you're visiting; home chores to delegate during your absence (such as pets and mail); and a list of things you want to buy overseas. Check the quarantine rules for each item on your shopping list: what goods will you have to declare at the airport when you get home to Australia? Are there any goods on your list that are strictly not allowed back into Australia?

Which should you declare? Imagine you're flying home to Australia after an overseas holiday, and the items below are all in your luggage. Which of these items will you need to declare at the airport when you get home? Fill them in on the Incoming Passenger Card.

Quarantine officers use x-ray machines to screen for
potential risk items in people's luggage. They are
looking for any materials made from plants or animals.

Word wise

Organic material is any material that is or was alive. Quarantine inspectors need to check all organic materials that come into Australia—as well as any items that could harbour organic material (for example wooden artefacts that insects like to eat and live in). A grass skirt, a book covered with banana leaf, a woollen floor rug, a drum covered with raw animal hide, and any sort of food (both raw and processed) are all examples of organic material. Examples of non-organic material include most manufactured goods (other than food), including electronics, goods made from metal or plastic, most clothing and most paper goods.

Download 'Quarantine at Australia's international airports and seaports'  PDF [318kb]

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