Day: July 10, 2025

But it’s taken time, effort and not a little money as I’ll go on to explain.

This Autumn I’ve planned to travel to Australia to meet with my cousin who’s the same age as me but who I haven’t seen since her family emigrated from the UK to Aus when we were about five years old. My family planned to go as well at the same time and we’d started to make all of the necessary arrangements but my dad got what he thought was a plum new job just beforehand and we stayed behind. Up until my last house move I still had a couple of 1950’s tea chests (wooden boxes about 1 metre cubed in which tea was shipped from Ceylon as it was then to the UK) with traces of tea still in them that my dad had got hold of to pack things in for the voyage.

But I digress. A few months ago I suddenly got the urge to get in contact with Denise, my cousin, but with little to go on I thought it would be a pretty hopeless task after so long but my brother in law came across some old correspondence from 30 or more years ago with a telephone number and when I phoned it was Denise who answered. Who’d have thought it. We’ve been in touch ever since and after a while I decided that as we are nearly the last of our generation in our two families, I’d make the trip to Aus to see each other for what might at our age be the first and last time.

I set to the task of making all of the necessary arrangements with enthusiasm. I figured on travelling this coming Autumn as that would coincide with Springtime in Australia and as this was around the turn of this year I was able to snag some pretty good prices for the air fare and car hire in Australia by booking and paying months in advance. Similarly for a hotel in Melbourne which I planned to explore for a few days before then continuing my journey to my cousin’s place in Victoria, but what I totally neglected to think about was my visitor visa.

After all, what could possibly go wrong? All I’ll need to do, I reasoned, was apply for one, probably on line, pay whatever fee is demanded, provide proof of identity etc and wait for it to plop into my letter box. What? Convicts used to be transported there from England back in the day, for goodness sake, I’m not an international criminal, terrorist or gun-runner so surely it should be just a formality? Well, no actually. This could not be further from the truth and in reality I had no idea how difficult it would be to get into Australia. Here’s how it went.

First step, of course, was to make the application on line, but not so fast. This required the submission of page after page of information, not just about oneself but also, indirectly, about one’s family, one’s health, finances, reason(s) for visiting Australia, what one’s intentions were once there, who one would be visiting together their details and much, much more. The process was mind-bending and seemingly endless and it didn’t end with the payment of a fairly hefty non-refundable fee of $200AU. That was just the start of the application process.

First I was required to submit copies of various documents that went some way beyond proof of identity and passport. I had to show evidence that if I had travelled internationally previously I had conformed to visa requirements and left the country or countries concerned according to the required timescales. I also had to provide evidence that I had the means and permission to return to my country of origin or departure and the means to finance my intended period of stay in Australia in the form of official bank statements and it should also be added that all copies of documents submitted had to be officially confirmed and verified.

All of the above was tedious, time consuming but was at least under my control, but there was more in the form of two, non-negotiable additional requirements. The first was the provision of my biometrics in the form of fingerprints and a photograph taken by an Australian government approved agency, usually a local Australian consulate. There is no Australian consulate in France however, that can perform this role – the closest one is in London – so an official agent has been appointed to do so. This agent happens to be in Paris so I had no choice but to make the journey to their office to accomplish the task. The only problem was that the Australian immigration authorities only allow 14 days from the date of application for biometrics submission beyond which one’s visa application would be summarily cancelled unless one had a very good reason – and the emphasis was placed on ‘very good’.

So in double-quick time I had to make an appointment with the approved agent, book a train fare and work out how to get the agent’s office once in Paris. Luckily the agent had an available appointment within the 14 day period and I booked a convenient inter-city train from Brive to take me there. I thought it sensible to buy a senior’s rail card as part of the fare as this gave a 30% discount for a year’s travel and only cost a bit more than the saving on this one fare alone but I was still just over 100€ out of pocket. I then had to pay for the Metro in Paris, another 7,90€, plus all-day parking at Brive, 9,70€ on top of that plus the cost of the biometric procedure, another 45€, so the cost of my visitor visa was beginning to mount up.

But there was another requirement, namely to undergo a medical examination by an approved medical examiner. Very generously, in comparison with the demand for biometrics, 28 days was allowed for this but the problem was that the medical examiners have been appointed by region and the one covering south-west France is in Bordeaux ie almost the geometrically opposite direction to Paris, meaning that during my visa application process I’d be travelling almost the whole length of France. But that wasn’t the most painful bit. The medical exam itself would be costing another hefty 200€!

I thought about taking the train from Périgueux to Bordeaux but in the end decided to go by car as I found that there was quite a bit of parking around the medical examiner’s office and that would avoid having to take a bus, or more likely a tram, there from the station. My plan worked out pretty well although not knowing how long the medical exam would take, I overpaid a few euros at the machine for on-street parking. Plus I also had to fork out a further 12,30€ at the lab just up the road for a blood test.

By now by my estimation my visa application had cost me in the realm of an additional 500€ over and above the actual cost of my Australian visit which I have to say I was not expecting and which came as quite a shock both physically and to my finances. However, at least I didn’t have to wait too long for what came next. The biometrics agent submitted their dossier to the Australian authorities over a week ago but the medical examiner only submitted his results one day ago, or two days on the day of my examination at most. Nevertheless, after being advised that applications could take some time to be processed, I received notification by email this morning that my visa had been approved.

This came as a considerable relief. I’d spent quite a considerable sum on air fares, car hire and hotel accommodation, all of which was at stake, before even considering my visitor visa and it would have been painful in every sense if for some reason I’d been turned down. But luckily I haven’t and I can now look forward to packing my bags and flying off to the other side of the world in the Autumn and getting to know my cousin who I’ve only spoken to on the phone and exchanged emails with in recent months and not seen face to face in over 70 years. I can’t wait and I’m sure it’ll all be worth it.