Chapter 69: X-rays

The next few days just seem to disappear. On Wednesday morning, Lisa asked Helena if she would like to attend Tim’s retirement, Helena declined saying it was for his workers but if you or any of our staff want to attend she has no problem.

Fred came into the unit advising “I have been trying to find out some information about the cargo from Vanuatu but their web site tell you nothing. How about we see Tim and the Customs/Border force people to find out the best was to process. Tim did mention we would need to buy something?”

Helena went to collect her cheque book. Julie took them to the airport. Tim was talking to Lisa on their arrival, Danielle immediately seeing Helena went and make them a cappuccino each. Helena smiled and thanked Danielle who blushed.

Fred asked “Tim just before you go, we are looking at customs with William’s cargo. Can you help the maze of non information on their web site, by speaking to a Manager there or something mate.”

Tim smiled. “Yes lets go and see them.”
Lisa replied “I’ll leave that to you guys, I do have some work to do here!” Smiling.

Fred, Tim and Helena went into the main airport building and found the Customs Manager, John having a coffee by himself. Tim sat down then introduced Fred and Helena.

Harry replied ‘Good guy.’

Tim started “You know I sold my business to Joe, This is Helena and Fred they are the other directors with Joe. They have a chance to pickup some overseas cargo for import and export. We would like to just have an informal chat about a way to go ahead with your support. We are talking about 1,000 to 10,000 letters/parcels weekly.”

John looked surprised “What, at present we do not have capacity to handle that?”

Fred asked “That’s why we are here, how can we all benefit, get a good turn around, keep all parties happy?”

Helena asked “Why not inform us of the process and lets see if we can help/improve a way forward. We are not seeking to upset you, just improve our customer flow for goods with your help.”

John gave them a quick overview of the process.

Helena replied “So any delays would be on the x-ray of the packages and your staffing?”

John replied surprised “Basically yes.”

Tim replied “Once you mentioned to me I could go into the import/export if I had a machine in my shed that you guys would control. Is that option available?”

John advised “Can we continue this talk in my office please. It’s getting too delicate in this public area?” They all left for his office.

In his office John showed then the customs operations from his window. John advised “Last week I went to Brisbane and saw a new x-ray unit, which we had set up a space for. The new unit can handle 1,000% the capacity of our current machine, but with department approvals and budget I had to let it pass. This is where you would need to bring the overseas bags/parcels for processing. It could take 1 to 10 hours to process.”

Helena asked “If we had a machine in our section, could you send an officer or two to work the machine and take away anytime suspicious, in the mean time we could continue with the rest of the cargo?”