Hi all

Just wondering if someone can recommend a company in Sydney for shipping from Sydney to the UK? Time is not an issue (although I need it to leave on a set date), cost is, so by sea rather than air. Any recommendations would be much appreciated!

Also, the reason I need to ship my bike to the UK is i'll be moving there for a year or two. I need to send over some of my stuff from Sydney - not furniture, just clothes, all my bike kit and a few packing boxes of other stuff.

The question is - have any of you sent extra stuff with your bike? Do you know if it makes sense from a cost perspective compared to posting it all back?

Thanks in advance!

James

Use Wallenius Wilhelmsen for the bike (that you will have to send empty), they're good and try to bring the rest of your gear with you when you fly. Anything that's important take as hand luggage anything you can live without either as checked-in luggage or send it.

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Graham & Elaine

GL1800 Motor Trike 2+2, one here, one there.

http://www.mayflowermcc.co.uk/butlers/

Check out this guy´s blog: www.planitearth.co.uk - UK to Australia 2007/08 - Home Page

We were also heading to Sydney with my girlfriend around the same time (April 2008), and exchanged some emails planning to ship back to Europe together with him, to possibly save some money, but in the end he was leaving before us, so we ended up doing it separately.

But I believe we both used the same freight company (Home: Tradelanes Global Solutions) - at least we did - and they´re located in Melbourne, but had an agent (D S Harrington) which is in St.Peters in Sydney, who handled the clearance and delivering the crate to the harbour. It was a Suzuki factory crate with dimensions: 79 x 229 x 111 cm. They seemed very professional, and everything went well at the Australian end.

Shipping this by sea cost us 480 euros from Sydney to Helsinki, but an extra 180 just to pick it up at the receiving end (I think the freight itself was quite a good price, but that last one, when the crate didnt overstay at the warehouse or anything, was a bit of a rip-off!) I believe you often get these hard-to-budget extra costs, when shipping by sea.

They said it was expected to take 42 days to Finland, but reportedly had missed a boat in Singapore, so ended up taking about 60 days. We had most of our luggage and some riding gear put inside the crate, and they all arrived intact. I even took some transport insurance, but sorry don´t remember where I took it from. Some may try to charge you 3-4 % of the value for that, but I believe you should be able to get it for 1-2% of the value, just ask around.