Email forwarded from Lloyd Kubis, a Canadian who spends part of the
year in Australia:

Read the attached --- Australia has gotten a very bad reputation for
visiting yachties as a result of cases like the attached!! It's too
bad as there is great cruising and lots of stuff to see, but being so
large it takes time!

My friend , a Canadian, who bought my old 48ft Krogen Whaleback had
a similar experience. He visited the Aussie embassy in NZ where he
had cruised to from Singapore, and they gave him a cruising permit
for 12 months for OZ and told him there would be no problem to renew
it as he needed time to do major work on the boat and also needed
time to sail around OZ.
As the expiry date neared he went to the local Customs office, who
had no problem with him extending but it was conditional on getting
an extension on their visiting visa issued by immigration. So I took
them to the local immigration office and after a somewhat rude
reception they turned him down demanding that he leave Australia at
the end of his visa. Since this was impossible; as he needed time to
sail the 4000 Kms to Darwin to leave OZ he asked for an extension of
about 4 months as it would take him that long to get there from my
place. They refused but offered initially a 2 month extension. After
a somewhat lengthy negotiation which included assistance from the
Marine section of Customs who were supportive of my friend they
finally got it up to about 4 months and he was able to get to Darwin
and out of OZ with his boat!!
The local office refused to honor the committment made by their own
embassy in NZ so I suppose the moral of the story is to get in
writing or just bypass OZ which quite a few yachties are doing!!

Cheers!
Lloyd

http://www.thecoastalpassage.com/manzaris.htmlhttp://www.thecoastalpassage.com/manzaris.html

There is no dispute that the Australian Authorities are a pain to deal
with. It's hard to tell exactly what was the cause of the Krogen owner's
problems. He was apparently Canadian, that may have complicated things.

But, I suspect that the real trouble was as follows, and it is a very
general one, not just Australian. As, one of my contacts at US Customs
pointed out to me about a week ago.

Cruising Permits are not VISAS. The Visa may be harder to get and for
the period of time needed than the Cruising Permit.

I loosely quote some material I saw. "Don't ever buy non refundable
airline or other travel tickets until you have the stamped visa in your
hands", and that the issued visa has the dates and privileges that you
were expecting.

In the case of the Krogen owner, he might have fared much better if he
had the visa issue taken care of before he got to Australia. The
Australians seem to be especially touchy about you're wanting a visa or
extension after you are already in the country.

There is probably more to this than reported.

Mike

Capt. Mike Maurice
Beaverton Oregon(Near Portland)