Passports

As we are now Australian Citizens we have both British and Australian Passports which, you would think, enables us to tick this particular box with alarming speed. But, oh no! What if we start to run out of pages and don’t have an address to have a new Passport forwarded to us? How about if we don’t have 6 months before the Passports expire and are unable to apply for a particular visa? What if we lose one? What happens if we have to leave one with a Consulate for whatever reason and we don’t get it back?!! Please bear in mind that I am writing this whilst Covid still has South Australian borders closed, Bob is still in NSW and I do have some time on my hands. Anyway, I have the answer…..

What we obviously need is a second British Passport with extra pages. Although not something that the UK Government shouts about, the issue of a second UK Passport is possible. As well as the usual form filling in, ID confirmation and photos, an accompanying letter, stating the requirements necessitating this precious commodity, is also requested. A bit of Googling suggested that the best approach would be to apply under the pretext of frequent forthcoming business trips and so that is what we did. We put together a pack containing both of our British passports, required documentation, photos and requested fees and sent it off to Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London. We received confirmation of delivery a couple of weeks later and were informed that both passports had been sent to the Southport office to be processed. Looking good we think. And then we waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, after about 3 months, Ian was contacted by the Passport Office and advised that the photo that he had submitted was too old?? How do they know this stuff, the photo was taken about 18 months ago? Anyway, Ian mailed a couple of recent photos and we again waited. Another 6 weeks passed when a courier turned up at home and handed over two large brown envelopes. Excellent, success. You can imagine our (well, not Ian so much) disappointment to find that Ian’s original passport and documentation was in one envelope and his brand new, super thick second passport in the second envelope. So where was mine?

Trying to get hold of anyone at the Passport Office is not dissimilar to dealing with Telstra with the added difficulty of the time difference. Many phone calls were made and we did get to speak to someone who confirmed that both passports had been in the system but could not explain why one had been processed and not the other. We were passed from pillar to post until we landed on the International desk. Here it was explained that a second passport would not be issued for me (still not sure why) and, if that wasn’t disappointing enough, was then told that my passport had been cancelled. Apparently they had been trying to contact me using an incorrect email address and had eventually given up. Great, now what? More phone calls were made until we were able to get a confirmation that a new passport would be issued to replace my cancelled original and the processing fee would be refunded as a gesture of goodwill. Two weeks later, I was back in possession of a brand new British passport (definitely no sign of a requested second passport) and am still waiting for my money to land in the bank account.