Abstract
Most business associates, friends, and fellow aviculturists reacted alike when learning of our upcoming trip to Australia, ''We envy everything but the long flight." We were much too excited, though, to worry about a 25 hour plane ride from Dallas to Melbourne.
The Australian Federation of Aviculture, their own "AFA," holds a convention every other year. This year the third national convention was held in May at Monash University in Melbourne. Aviculture '85 "Conservation on the Wing'' was the theme.
Although much smaller than our own AFA, the Australian organization's meeting attracted almost 400 serious aviculturists from all over Australia as well as from New Zealand, England, the USA, and Canada. We never ceased to be amazed at the sincerity and politeness of this group of aviculturists and we were delighted with their willingness to share knowledge and ideas.
"Involvement" as well as conservation could well have been the convention theme. It was surely the goal of the planning committee. From start to finish we found little or no time for any extraneous activities. The schedule of events went much like this: Friday morning was the exhibit set up; Friday afternoon there was a tour of the Melbourne zoo and aviaries; Friday evening was devoted to opening ceremonies and registration followed by a social time with refreshments; Saturday was filled with lectures and exhibits followed in the evening by the gala event-dinner, dancing, and entertainment; Sunday was devoted to lectures, exhibits, and a wonderful bird display; Monday contained more lectures and exhibits and ended with the closing ceremonies and awards; for those who remained after the official end of the convention, Tuesday was taken up with all-day tours of Healesville Sanctuary and two private aviaries. The whole convention demanded full-time involvement and we loved it.
To back up a little bit, we arrived in Melbourne Tuesday morning not knowing quite what to expect. As you can well imagine, the unexpected happened. After all our effort and expense, after 25 hours flying time, plane changes, and lay-overs, all the while worrying about our products for display at the convention, after all this, we were informed that Australian Customs officers had confiscated all the products. To make matters worse, we learned that our reservations had been incorrectly recorded and no rooms in the hotel were available. What to do?
We were disappointed but not discouraged. Fortunately, Max Thomas, who had been so helpful in our early planning, came to the rescue and our luck changed from bad to outstanding. Max, a member of the convention planning committee, got on the phone and after several calls located a room. It was not quite so conveniently located but rooms were scarce. Now politeness and trust ran rampant. We were not required to register, pre-pay, or even produce a charge card. When we inquired about a bank where we could exchange currency, we were promptly given $100.00 Australian to hold us over until we could get to the bank. I doubt if all motels are so trusting but the Burwood East Motel definitely has our recommendation.
The next morning found us back at customs prepared to beg, plead, cry, or do anything necessary to get our products released. We didn't even have a chance to go through our routine. We were asked to wait fifteen minutes while paperwork was processed, pay an import duty of about $23.00 and our products were cheerfully returned. Things were looking up.
With everything finally fixed up we spent Friday afternoon visiting the Melbourne Zoo where we had our first real look at rare black cockatoos. Pairs of red-tails, white-tails, yellow-tails, and gang-gangs left us in awe while the local Australians viewed them with as much enthusiasm as we would have for a cage of sparrows. Birds the Australians took for granted had brought us thousands of miles. We had come to see cockatoos and this was only the beginning!
One question on our mind was, "Can we bring cockatoos with us when we return to the States?" The answer was simple. Australian law says basically "nothing in and nothing out.'' The borders have been closed for almost 40 years. We expected to see much the same birdlife in Australian aviaries as we saw in American aviaries with the addition of lots of rare cockatoos. We soon learned that birds not native to Australia were quite rare. Virtually no Amazon parrots were in Australia and very few Australians could correctly identify Otis, our double-yellow headed Amazon. There were several pairs of blue and gold macaws around and Australia even has Hyacinth macaws-two to be exact, at separate zoos.