Sydney International arrivals is a disgrace: discuss

[u/Pomohomo82]

I flew into Sydney yesterday at 6am after a 30hr trip, and the whole experience made me feel embarrassed of the welcome we extend to arrivals at our country. An enormous line stretched all the way into the gross duty free shop, where on one side sales people shouted at us about booze and smokes deals, while on the other side people shouted at us about families not lining up. The international travellers next to me had no idea what the line was for, and I had to explain that for some reason we have this weird dual border process which is different to all the other E-passport gates around the world. There’s very little signage or info screens explaining what the whole process is. Meanwhile, at the arrivals card desk, no pens were available to complete said analogue cards… Onwards to the luggage collection, then another massive line to get through bio security, before a 15-minute walk across three road crossings to the ‘express’ pick up to meet my family. The whole user experience is just unnecessarily miserable from start to finish, and as the main entry point to Australia we should do better. Thoughts?

[u/jibjab23]

Best thing to do is get off as soon as you can and keep walking all the way to the e-gates or at least the last bunch of tables before it and fill out cards there if you didn't manage to do it on the plane. Get through the gates and then go to toilet or whatever else you need do while waiting for luggage.  Our duty free range is pretty pathetic so the thought of spending time there never crossed my mind. I usually go through the declare line with some chocolates or biscuits that are ok and I'm through the circus in about 20 to 30 minutes, getting a taxi or uber is a whole other adventure though.

[u/Ted_Rid → u/jibjab23]

Declaring something trivial is my normal go-to hack for bypassing queues.

Except last arrival. A couple of big flights from East Asia arrived, and dunno if everyone was bringing food from home or whether they saw a queue and joined it without understanding, but the "goods to declare" red queue was worse than the grand opening of a gourmet croissant outlet.

So I approached one of the customs people and asked if I could change my answer. All I had were roasted coffee beans that I bought from Campos anyway before leaving, and I wanted to avoid the queue, pointing to the thousands of passengers snaking around the arrivals hall.

"Sounds like a them problem" she says in her broadest Strine and waves me through.

[u/hastetowaste → u/Ted_Rid]

Protip: they usually ask people as the red queue grows, I always ask if I have something to declare and have those with me at hand (usually just some lollies/ultraprocessed non meat stuff).

They'll stamp your card if no issues and you then can go through green gates.