Hello,

Has anybody any experience of transporting a bike from Australia back to the UK?
My brother recently emigrated to Oz and took his bikes with him, he hasn’t done anywhere near the amount of riding as he was hoping and has decided to give me his Orange Five!
I am going over at Xmas (to see him & family, not just to bring the bike back!!)
What would be the best way to bring it back?
Could he just break it down and post it?
I thought about taking my luggage in a bike bag and coming back with the bike in it! Can i do this?

Please help, any info/ tips would be appreciated
Thank you!

Taking standard luggage out in a bike bag should be ok, but you’ll lose about 10kg of your own allowance and they might query the size of your bag.

You can ship it, but it might be cheaper to buy one off ebay. Seriously: cost me £60 to send a motorcycle helmet to Adelaide overland!

Which airline are you flying with? Quantas and BA are pretty good with bikes. Why not box it up in a cardboard bike box and fly it back like that? You’ll need to take the wheels off, put some spacers in the dropouts, get some pipe lagging from woolworths out there to put around the squishy bits and that’s about it. Saves having to haul your won bike bag out there. If you’ve got wheel bags then you could consider rolling them up and strapping them to a rucksack.

Hi, biggest problem would be tax. I’ve just been stung importing a Salsa frame from the USA. In researching I noted that second hand goods are still liable, albeit at possible reduced rates. To put this into perspective the minimum tax for new goods would be about 25% of the UK RRP. I got charged 35% (complaint sent). So you might get asked to pay best part of a grand if it looks new and it goes through a mechanism that would need checking (post).

One avenue to explore would be the ‘bringing personal possessions into the uk’ where there are allowances if you bring things you own back into the UK. It is meant for those that lived abroad for a while. If the bike was purchased in the UK and you have paperwork, this might work for you. Even if you get stung initially you may well be able to claim back.

However, folk take bikes on holiday all the time and don’t get charged. I’m not aware they check there is a bike on the outgoing so in theory no reason you can’t ‘bring your bike back from holiday’. Paperwork showing UK purchase would be an easy ticket. No need to be sneaky in that situation.

Tax is a non issue if he bought it in the UK and it’s returning to the UK, no tax is due. You can’t or rather shouldn’t pay tax twice! At least if he’s still got a UK passport and hasn’t been out there too long, but still I’d think if it’s a personal possion returning to place of purchase there’s no tax due (you could even say it’s a return to manufacturer. Such cases are not taxable).

Buy it out there and ship it back then it’s another matter as tax is due.

It’s in the family so just have it posted back to his name at your address. Make sure the customs form is filled in correctly and well described and it’s posted to a personal address. Might have to be prepared to argue if they do try to charge.

Problem you’ll have is if it goes via courier they often automatically charge on behalf of customs regardless. Things that come in via Royal Mail / Mount Pleasant are just random whether they bother though more often than not they don’t bother.

Anyway, if you brought it back personally then very high chance you’ll not be bothered at all through customs, and you just argue either you’re bringing it back on his behalf and it was bought in UK (or you loaned it to him), or say you took it out and are bringing it back. They have no idea you took it out. Done that with skis before. Go out, buy skis, use them and return (making sure I’ve posted the receipts back separately 😉 ).

Bigger issue surely is it will cost a fortune to ship heavy girders? 😛