The Biosecurity officers at Port Kembla deal with all sorts of things; beetles, stinkbugs, stagnant water on board ships, the vehicles from the movie Fury Road.
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Yep, the trucks and cars used in the most recent Mad Max film came in through Port Kembla, once filming in South Africa was over.
“It’s not too often you see stuff like that come in,” said senior Biosecurity officer Kelly Tindall.
“We see plenty of used cars and used trucks but we don’t see stuff like this coming through very often.”
The vehicles were kept in a closed shed away from prying eyes –after all, the film hadn’t been released at the time.
Tindall said there was a bit of a fight to be among the lucky staff members to inspect the Mad Max fleet.
“Lucky for us there was a bit of it so it took a few of us to get through it,” she said.
“There was also quite a bit of it that needed some remedial cleaning to meet our expectations so we had to go back and re-inspect those vehicles as well as with a different crew, so everybody got to have a look.”
Tindall said she wasn’t a Mad Max fan but she went to see Fury Road when it hit the cinemas because she wanted to look at the cars she’d checked out and cleaned.
What the Biosecurity officers were looking for in those vehicles was the same as for any of the cars that routinely come through the port.
When a new fleet arrives and is parked at the port, officers will walk up and down every row to inspect the cars.
“People think with new cars, there can’t be anything on them,” she said.
There was also quite a bit of it that needed some remedial cleaning to meet our expectations so we had to go back and re-inspect those vehicles as well as with a different crew.
- Senior Biosecurity officer Kelly Tindall on the inspection of the vehicles from Fury Road
“A lot of the time they come in with with plastic covering on them and that plastic is very sticky.
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“So during the transport they’ll often pick up weed seeds from all over the place.
“Sometimes, if the weather’s not great over in Europe, for example, they’ll often kick up mud in the wheel guards and we’ll get them to clean that up too.”
The Biosecurity team fall under the federal Agriculture and Water Department.
Their job is to check for animals, pests, disease, plant material and seed – anything that could pose a threat to the country’s agriculture industries.
Each ship that comes into the port has to lodge a report with Biosecurity, who then assess the risk and work out the “intervention levels” that are required.
Those ships that are in the port regularly and have a good compliance level will be inspected less frequently than others.
But they all get inspected at one time or another.
“Those ships, where they do have good compliance, we will risk assess them to a lower level and we will go on to those ships one in every three visits,” Ms Tindall said.
One of the bigger threats this year has been the brown marmorated stinkbug, on some ships coming from the US or Europe.
“They would be a very big horticultural pest for us,” Tindall said.
“They like fruit, they like trees. They also like to hibernate in your house and they breed in big numbers so we do a lot of intervention with those ships coming out of those risk ports.
“We inspect their cargo, we inspect their deck, we get them to fumigate their vessel prior to being able to discharge cargo.”
The Biosecurity team also has the power to refuse entry for a ship if the cargo is not up to scratch.
“Heavy machinery like bulldozers that are used overseas in construction, there’s a requirement that they come in what we call ‘clean as new’,” Ms Tindall said.
“They’re required to pull them apart, clean them, wash them to a standard that is acceptable for us.
“If they don’t come up to that standard we can export them back to where they came from to get cleaned before they come back in.”