Should be ok...

Wow, so to add to what Graeme was saying in his last post, delivering the car yesterday pretty much went off without a hitch until I got an email from our shipping agent at 4.42pm saying the shipping line wanted the hazardous goods form by 10am the next day! Yikes, I didn't see this email until about 8 or 9pm and was freaking out a little bit because there's nothing I could do about it. I really wish all these people involved would deal with this themselves. I'm very tired of being the piggy in the middle, relaying messages and chasing people up. Anyway, we ended up emailing the guy who was doing that form to ask if he was able to have it done by then. I was then stressing out and ranting for a little while until Graeme calmed me down and helped me realise that there's nothing I could do about it anyway. I couldn't hurry them up, I can't fill out the form myself so it was completely out of my hands.

I guess I was worried because, as I feared, no-one at the depot was expecting us yesterday when we dropped the car off, we weren't given a receipt or anything to sign to say that the depot now has our car. We were just kind of directed to drive the car into one of the sheds as you would’ve seen in one of the pictures in Graeme’s blog post. We then had a chat with the larrikin (I mean that in a nice way – he was a hoot!) who obviously looks after the packing of exports. He wasn't concerned about anything. He asked us what does he need to know about the car, so we said well, here's the key for the roof rack, there's about a quarter of a tank of diesel in it so an AMSA250 form will be accompanying it, and then we introduced our "pet snake" and travelling companion, Quorn. (You would've seen pictures of Quorn from Graeme's last trip - if not, scroll through previous blog posts from April 2012).

So that was that. We then drove down the road from the depot and I sent off an email to all parties involved that the car had been delivered. Done. Or so I thought until I got home and read the aforementioned email from our shipping agent.

Anyway, crisis averted because I checked my email this morning and there was a copy of that wonderful form the shipping line was after. For the second time since working there, I literally said a “WOO HOO!!”, threw my arms in the air and nearly hugged my workmate as she was coming towards me to ask me a work-related question! Made a total goose of myself as per usual. Anyway, everyone was super excited for us once I explained what was going on. And the form we needed was done before 9am – well ahead of time! Phew. Hopefully that means that the export from Australia is going to be all sorted without our involvement from now on. The shipping day is next Tuesday and after that we'll get the dreaded invoice to pay and the Bill of Lading that will enable us to get the car out at the other end, and that's that. The second phase of shipping can't commence until us and the car get to Vladivostok. The plan is that by the time we get to Vladivostok the car will already be there on the docks, just waiting for us to start the customs process over there. Hmmm, fun times.

Our ship has changed from the Maersk Garonne to the Maersk Dryden. Here's a picture of the Dryden...

Maersk Dryden

Yesterday was such a long day having to drive to Sydney, sort out the depot and drive back. We were both absolutely kaput by the time we got home. We both woke up feeling exhausted this morning. Driving on our holiday will be different. And because we've already trekked halfway around Australia doing the same sort of trip, we know this for certain. It's a different type of tired you feel at the end of a day of driving when you're on a trip, as opposed to driving somewhere for utilitarian purposes.

We did manage to get down to the seaside at Port Botany to watch, from a distance, the shipping docks in action yesterday. We saw loads of containers stacked up on shore, the massive fixed cranes they use to get containers from ship to shore, and forklifts they use to manoeuvre the containers around. Incredible. We were also lucky enough to see a fully loaded ship coming into the docks! Weirdly, because the ship was moving so slowly and was laden with containers, it ended up becoming camouflaged! We seriously couldn't see it unless we stared at the same spot for a little bit and eventually saw the ship moving slowly.

Here's a little statistic, I've sent and received well over 180 emails over the past year regarding shipping, visas, flights etc. Holy moly. No wonder I get a little bit overwhelmed with information at times!

I still can't believe that all this is happening and that we’ll be off on our adventure in a few short weeks. Graeme said in his last post that I was feeling sad yesterday, and that I was concerned about not seeing the car again. I’m really not worried anymore. I’m going to allow myself the next few weeks to not worry about the car at all. There’ll be enough work to do to get the car back at the other end, and even then, it’s just a process that we have to go through. Not understanding that process and the role of the seemingly bazillion people involved is what makes it hard – thankfully I think pretty much most of the Russian people we’ll need to deal with speak enough English to help.

To quote an iconic Aussie phrase: “She’ll be right mate!”.