Good post. I did the temp import in Perth airport on March 2008. One of the reasons for all the hassle with the inspections etc. seemed to be, that they added the bike into the Australian vehicle register (even though it was not necessary to get local plates). All vehicles arrive shipped to Oz, so it kinda makes sense they want to have a look at it before they do that. Receiving my bike, nobody mentioned any insurance, and I didn´t want to bring it up at the airport, so that I could get the bike out of there without delays. Took a couple of days to figure out, how it works. I was able to first get a temporary insurance by phone for 48 hours, this allowed me to ride legally to the inspection site. The rest was pretty much as you described.

“There are two kinds of Third-Party insurance that you can get: Personal and Property. Personal is compulsory, Property is optional“

– About this part, I must admit that I had no idea (or maybe it was different 5 years ago) but I´m not fully familiar with the terminology: does this mean, that ´personal´ covers the people, that may get injured in an accident caused by you.. and that ´property´ covers their vehicles and other material losses in a similar case?

BTW, the quarantine inspection is to be taken seriously. About a year ago, there was an old bus from Finland doing a RTW-tour, and the travellers tried real hard to clean it, but it never passed that inspection, so it was never allowed into Oz. In the end they had to send it onwards, and ended up renting another bus to travel there! Of course a bike will be a lot easier to clean than an old bus, but still worth noting, that vehicles can be completely refused entry.

Exactomundo

The first one is called COMPULSORY 3rd Party and if you are on the road you must have it, it covers people that YOU run into, or are involved in an accident.

The second is an extra you can pay if you like, it covers that stretch limo or BMW that you Tbone while riding

Cheers
TS

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There are commercial Quarantine cleaners that will clean your transport and arrange the required inspection clearance , saves you a lot of hassle , esp if your standard is not quite as high as the DEPT !

In my case, I found their standards quite below mines but I do encourage everyone to give their bike a good wash before shipping to Australia and to ensure there's no bugs stuck anywhere (including under the bash plate, on sprocket cover, the center stand and on the inside of the mudguards).

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