Sending a Christmas Hamper Home to Australia From Overseas

By Vicki Richards, National Customer Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

Yes, you can send a Christmas hamper to Australia from overseas, and the easiest way is to buy from an Australian shop rather than post one yourself. You order from wherever you are, pay in Australian dollars, and the parcel travels as a domestic delivery: no customs, no biosecurity risk.

There is a particular kind of December that belongs to Australians living somewhere else. It gets dark at four where you are, or it is 32 degrees and monsoonal and nothing about it feels like Christmas, and at some point on the 25th your phone fills with photographs of a table you are not sitting at.

Sending something is the obvious answer. A good share of the Christmas orders that come through our site are placed from outside Australia, most of them from the UK, and the pattern rarely changes. Somebody in London or New York or Auckland digs out an address, pays in a currency that is not theirs at an hour that is not sensible, and a box lands on a doormat in Bendigo or Toowoomba the following week.

None of it is hard, though overseas senders get stuck in places you would not expect. This is the whole job in order, from why you should not post a parcel yourself through to the message on the card. If you already know what you want, the Christmas hampers range is where to start.

Buy it inside Australia, do not post one yourself

The instinct is to fill a box with things from where you live, wrap it well and send it. It is a generous idea and it goes wrong more often than it works.

Australia screens food arriving by international mail, and the biosecurity rules are strict enough that a well meant parcel of cheese, cured meat, honey, nuts or seeds can be held, opened or destroyed at the border. The Australian government publishes what is allowed, worth reading before you tape anything shut. Even when a parcel clears, international postage on something heavy usually costs more than the food inside it, and December is the worst month of the year to be buying transit time across an ocean.

Ordering from an Australian retailer removes every one of those problems. The hamper is packed here and posted here, so it arrives as an ordinary domestic parcel with tracking on it. Your billing address can be anywhere in the world. Only the delivery address has to be Australian.

Paying in Australian dollars with an overseas card

Every price you see is in Australian dollars, and Australian dollars is what you will be charged in. Your bank converts at its own rate on the day and most cards add a foreign transaction fee, so the figure on your statement will not match the checkout total exactly. Worth knowing, not worth worrying about.

Two things work in your favour. Australian prices tend to read generously once they are converted out of pounds, euros or US dollars, and shipping is free Australia wide on orders over $100. Our gourmet hampers run from about $60 to $300, so an order at or above that mark arrives with nothing added at the end.

If a card gets declined it is almost always a fraud filter reacting to an unfamiliar Australian merchant rather than anything at our end. A quick approval in your banking app usually clears it.

The clock, and how to get around it

The one genuine complication of ordering from abroad is that you are working against a business day that either finished hours ago or has not started. It is easier than it sounds, because only one time matters.

Order before 12pm on a weekday and the hamper is dispatched that day from our packing bench in Geelong. After that the parcel belongs to Australia Post and the transit time is theirs, not ours, which is why we will not quote a number of days for a particular postcode. Same day dispatch is not same day delivery, and nobody should promise you otherwise. Geelong runs on Melbourne time, which from October through to April is daylight saving, eleven hours ahead of the UK.

Order during your own working day and you are almost always inside the next Australian dispatch run. The longer view matters more. Australia Post confirms its Christmas delivery dates in October each year, and they fall earlier for long distances and regional addresses. From overseas, do not aim at the deadline. Aim at late November, while the network is calm and there is still time to fix a wrong address without anybody finding out.

What to send when you are the one who is away

Your family has the ham and the prawns handled. What nobody remembers to buy is the rest of the table: the board that comes out at 11am, the chutney beside the cold cuts on Boxing Day. Three hampers cover most overseas senders.

• Taste Australia Gourmet Hamper, $199.95. Everything in it is Australian: St Hugo Cabernet Sauvignon from South Australia, two beers from Bells Beach Brewing here in Victoria, Nutworks macadamias still in the shell, Kangaroo Island olives and Ligurian bee honey popcorn. Sending Australia to Australians sounds odd until you remember who is homesick. This is the hamper for the person who left.
• Gourmet Selection Hamper, $89.95. No alcohol in it, so no adult has to be home to receive it. Fig and almond fruit pyramid, pistachio macarons, date and walnut crackers, that same honey popcorn. The safe choice when you are not certain what the household looks like this year.
• Gourmet Bites Hamper, $59.95. The small one that still reads as a gift. Sea salt crackers, Belgian cocoa dusted truffles, cashew brittle, butter shortbread. Good for a grandparent, a godchild, or the friend who fed you for a decade.

If an adult being home is the question mark, the wider non-alcoholic hampers shelf removes it. To add something small and specific, Sovereign Hill sweets are under $10: eucalyptus drops, raspberry drops, barley sugar, boiled lollies of the sort that live in a very particular Australian memory. Our hamper team has written the longer version of what to put in a Christmas hamper, and if you have been away long enough to have lost the thread, what Australians actually eat at Christmas is a useful two minutes.

The card is the part they keep

Every hamper goes out with a free personalised gift card. You type the message at checkout and it is slipped under the gold ribbon, so it is the first thing seen when the lid comes off. Sign it, because otherwise nobody knows who the parcel is from, and write more than three words. Distance makes the message work harder than usual: "we will be thinking about you at about 2am our time" says something that "Merry Christmas" does not.

There is a better version of that card for anyone sending from overseas. Record a short video on your phone, add your hamper to the cart, choose the customised gift card option, upload the video with your written message, and a QR code is printed inside the card. Your mum scans it on Christmas morning and gets your face and your voice instead of your handwriting. The personalised video message is free with every hamper, and if the whole problem is that you cannot be in the room, it is the closest thing to being in it.

Details that decide how it lands

• Use an Australian contact number. Delivery notifications and any redelivery contact go to the number on the parcel, and a +44 mobile is no use to a driver in Adelaide. Put the recipient's number on the delivery details and your own on the account.
• Pick an address where somebody will be. The last fortnight before Christmas empties houses from breakfast until dark. A workplace, with the company name on the address line, is the most reliable destination through early December.
• Alcohol needs an adult to receive it. A wine or Champagne hamper sent to an empty house becomes a trip to the post office with photo ID, which is a poor gift from 17,000 kilometres away.
• Several households, one order. Add every hamper to the same cart and choose the ship to multiple addresses option at checkout. You pay once, each parcel is tracked separately, and each carries its own card message.

If you have left it late

Some years you find out on the 20th that your cousin has moved and nobody has the new address. A digital gift voucher covers it: values from $25 to $1,000, delivered by email, redeemable across the range. It only reads as a consolation prize when you send it blank. Write the message you would have put in the card and it lands as a gift.

Common questions

Can I send a Christmas hamper to Australia from the UK?

Yes. You order on the Australian site from wherever you are, enter your own billing address and an Australian delivery address, and pay with your usual card. The hamper is packed in Geelong and posted domestically, so nothing crosses a border and there is no customs form, no duty and no biosecurity risk. The same applies from the US, New Zealand, Canada or Singapore.

Can I pay with a UK card in Australian dollars?

Yes. Prices are set in Australian dollars and that is the currency charged. Your bank converts at its rate on the day and most cards add a foreign transaction fee, so expect a small difference between the checkout total and your statement. If a payment is refused, it is usually your bank querying an unfamiliar overseas merchant, not a problem with the order.

What time is the Australian Christmas cutoff in UK time?

Our dispatch cutoff is 12pm on weekdays, Melbourne time, which in December is 1am in the UK. Anything ordered across a London working day sits inside the next day's run. The dates that matter more are Australia Post's Christmas deadlines, confirmed each October, which fall earlier for long distances and regional addresses. Order in late November and none of it applies to you.

Can you include a message from me?

Yes, in two ways. Every hamper includes a free personalised gift card, written at checkout and tucked under the ribbon. You can also record a video on your phone and upload it with the order, and the QR code that plays it is printed inside the same card. Both are free, and the video is the one that gets watched twice.

Being away at Christmas does not get easier, but this part is solvable. Pick an address where somebody will be, order in November while the network is calm, write a card that sounds like you, and choose from the Christmas hampers range. It arrives hand packed in Geelong, with your face inside the card.