Day 107 : FTFE Luckens out

Perth : High point: Luckens, Luckens, Luckens!

Low point: Realising we’d have 7 days to drive 9,000 km

BBQ point: Burgers in Luckens fumigation centre

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It was an early start for my induction into how things roll on the FTFE expedition. We were excited and apprehensive (but mainly tired) as we headed to Freemantle Port at 6:45am to welcome Martha from her trip across the Ocean on Melbourne Cup day. As we pulled into Lucken’ s Fumigation Services http://www.luckensfumigationservices.com.au/ (who would be unloading Martha and managing quarantine clearance) there was a slight problem… Martha hadn’t arrived yet and nobody seemed to know where she was! Steve got on the phone to Richard Dexter of Bluefreight and there were various calls backwards and forwards as they tried to locate her. There was no joy and we missed our slot with the Quarantine Officer, who would be inspecting Martha to see if she was up to the very strict Aussie cleanliness standards for importing vehicles.Our mood was dampened further as Steve spoke to the guys at Luckens. They said even when Martha did arrive, there was a 3 day waiting list for containers to be unloaded and a 3 week waiting list if she didn’t pass the inspection and needed to be professionally cleaned. They had never known of a second hand vehicle being cleared and through quarantine in under 3 weeks! Things weren’t looking good with no Martha and the prospect of driving 9,000km in under a week we were thinking we could be in a bit of flammin’ trouble here! As we sat in the blazing sun at the Port, beating off flies, surrounded by sea containers and watching the hive of activity Steve was feeling disheartened, convinced the FTFE luck had finally run out and this was going to jeopardise the whole expedition. Paul and I weren’t at all worried and knew that some how Steve would pull it out of the bag like he usually did.

Eventually Martha arrived in the container that had been her home for the past week and Steve spoke to the guys in the Luckens office to see what could be done. Luckens were really impressed by the FTFE expedition and really wanted to help, the next thing we knew Martha was being unloaded from her container, she was looking cleaner than she had on launch day. Fingers crossed the Quarantine Officer would think so too!

Martha was moved to the inspection area and the Quarantine Officers headed down to start putting her through her paces. We watched on nervously as they ran their fingers along her bodywork, used torches to look underneath and opened lockers to inspect boxes. Unfortunately it wasn’t good news, although the Quarantine Officers really wanted to pass Martha her condition wasn’t up to scratch and she would need to be professionally cleaned to remove all traces of mud and plant life that had collected over the course of 4 months and 22 countries. We were also sad to have our Vestey Food ration packs confiscated, I was looking forward to a nice Beef Stroganoff!

Fortunately lady Luckens was shining on us! Luckens offered to do all the cleaning to make sure we could clear quarantine (which would normally cost $7,000 Australian) for free, and better than that, they would start straight away! The expedition was back on track, at most we would lose a couple of days but nothing compared to worst case scenario!  Steve, Paul and I got to work straight away, removing everything and anything from the fire engine and sorting through all the equipment and bits and pieces that had been accumulated from the different countries.

The Quarantine Officers wanted to check all equipment and boxes so it was a good opportunity for a spring clean. Tents were taken out of their bags, turned inside out and cleaned, solar showers were rinsed through to ensure there was no trace of river water (which can cause what the Aussie’s call ‘Rock Snot’ apparently), boxes were cleared of any plant like materials, even Magnum boots were cleaned. It was hot, hard work and we looked the part wearing our high vis vests and covered in grease and oil with dirty faces and sweat running down our cheeks. As it was Melbourne Cup day Luckens were having a BBQ in their fumigation centre and invited us along. Could it things get any better! Were these guys for real?  At 5pm the Quarantine Inspectors came to do a final check, all our equipment passed but they found traces of mud that Luckens had been unable to shift despite their best efforts. After the longest day ever it looked like we’d be back to do the same again tomorrow.  Huge, huge thank you to Luckens and fingers crossed for tomorrow!

Amy

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