Coming over from Oz for a week in april and wondering if I should throw the bike in.

Will it need to be spotless for a flight in from Oz?
Is there anything decent to hire out there/ride from the city – I’ll probably have a car but will be tied to the city for work?
From what I read having a UK passport & PR in oz should avoid needing visa/paperwork.
Anything worth doing, places to stay/eat/visit while I’m over

Cheers

Mike

Bump,

I’m down in Tauranga, generally avoid Jaffa-ville if I can, but if you have a car and a bike then Woodhill is less than an hour north of Akl and has everything from XC to gnar. You can probably hire a decent bike from a LBS, ask on vorb.org.nz, some locals will be able to give you better advice than me.

And yes, you will need to scrub your bike to within an inch of its life to get past airport security.

If bikes are like walking gear, then it will be scrub everything to within an inch of its life before you get there, possibly followed by them scrubbing it all again for you, possibly for a fee. More to the point, same on your way back to Oz, then possibly again into TAS depending on what quarantine officers they have at the airport. Consequently, when I went to chch a couple of years back, I just hired to save the hassle (though you still need to clean all your gear etc).

Visas, if you have PR in Oz you should get PR in NZ until you leave (i.e. residency is lost after you leave, so presumably you just re-apply by presenting your Oz PR visa next time you go) – just watch which queue to go through at immigration. I was in the bizarre situation of having PR whilst I was there through having PR in Oz, yet the mate I was visiting was facing being booted out in a few weeks as he only had a temporary visa. I assume I just get another PR stamp next time I go…

Cheers

no stamps here anymore all on the computer…

The Launceston airport ones are not the best, flying back in late so they will all have gone home (the dog needs an early night) It’s mostly going to be evenings after meetings so might not bother.

Was meant to be going over the weekend in which case I would be off to Rotorura….