If it is Wednesday, this must be Sydney.
I'm sitting in the plane trying to fill out my customs and immigration
form as creatively as possible. I was already thrown by the first
question that asked me if if I was either a) Resident returning to
Australia, b) Visitor to Australia or c) Non-resident Emigrating to
Australia, but the really curly ones were the quarantine rules.
While I didn't have any endangered species taped to the inside of my
trousers, I've flown here with an awful lot of strange equipment that I
really don't know the value of. So naturally the only thing I have to
declare is that I don't know what I'm doing.
The last question does become a problem. "Have you been to South America
or Africa in the last 6 days ?" A quick calculation reveals that I was in
Sao Paulo last week so I tick the box.
When I arrive at immigration I'm welcomed to back to Australia
"DO you have your Yellow Fever card, it says here you've
been to South America"
"No, I left it at home"
"Well I guess we have to give you you another needle before
you can enter the country" (pause) "I was only joking, welcome
home, Have a seat over there, a quarantine officer will be
with you shortly."
Naturally when the man does arrive a few seconds later, He just writes my
name and passport number on a fresh new page that says "Yellow fever",
so I can now safely assume that when there is an outbreak of the virus in
Sydney, it will be my passport photo that appears on the evening news with
some appropriate caption like "Dickhead brings ebola to modern world..."
There is probably some sort of irony about the fact that Australia
invited the world to come with us to the land down under, but we didn't
want any of the germs that came along with it.
For some unknown reason quarantine doesn't even choke when they x-ray ALL
my bags, move along sir, have a good day.
