Western Australia's remoteness has provided the State with a natural barrier against many pests and diseases. To help keep Western Australia disease-free there are strict quarantine laws regarding importing and transporting plants and food stuffs.
While they may seem harmless, nuts, seeds, fruit and vegetables, plants, flowers, honey, animals and introduced birds pose real threats to the Western Australian environment. Even used fruit and vegetable containers should be presented and scanned by Australian Quarantine and Inspection Services (AQIS) to ensure they are clean, and present no risk.
The best rule to follow is, ‘if in doubt, declare it’. State-based AQIS officers are friendly, welcoming and professionally trained and generally return more than 90 per cent of declared items to visitors. They want you to have a great holiday in Western Australia. Be warned, heavy penalties apply to those people not declaring items identified as a risk.
Visit Quarantine WA online for further information.
Australia’s Golden Outback shares the same time zone as the rest of Western Australia. It is two hours behind Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania time and one and a half hours behind South Australia and Northern Territory tim