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Hi Brawlblether, I'm assuming you mean the wooden stick. No issues clearing customs in Melbourne?Where is "home"? How and by what route are you travelling home?
I took mine on the plane (back to Melbourne, Australia) without any issue. It was well wrapped up. I flew from Madrid to Rome then after a week onto Melbourne.
Well as you know if you travel much, every desk and gate and security person is different. You get an easy one and then you get a difficult one. Its a crap shoot. For us the check-in agent for our airline said the sticks had to be checked, he said "its not possible to take them in the passenger cabin". We may have gotten a hard one. Your results may differ. We also had some tight connections and a late departure from LaCorunna caused us a missed connection in Chicago to Seattle. That meant we sat an extra 3+ hours in Chicago at O'hare. While a miss is a pain...what can ya do. Good luck. Look at my other post here named A few observations on walking the Camino. It might give you some tips.Yep, sorry.. home is the US. I'm hoping to avoid checking anything if possible. We've got some tight connections, so the easier it is to get from place to place, the better. But perhaps that is the way to go!
I too was reluctant to put my trusty walking stick (purchased in St Jean in 2012) in the hands of the airlines and actually left it twice in Santiago with a friend who owns Pension Mafer there and picked it up on my return to go walking. I had flown home from Santiago twice and had observed check-in staff taking all manner of walking aids from pilgrims without any fuss. The two airlines were Aer Lingus and Iberian and I decided this year to try and bring my 'friend' home with me. I duly arrived at the airport with my stick simply marked that I would recognise it and was over the moon when the lady on the check-in desk accepted the stick at no extra charge. It went into the hold and arrived safely in Dublin It might be much more complicated if there are multiple legs to your journey home.I've spoken at length about how much that walking stick meant to me. I considered it just as much a walking companion as anyone
You'll have to check it, but we didn't have problems. Tight connections or no, if it somewhow didn't make the connection they'll get it to you later, and meanwhile it isn't like clothing or something you might "need" immediately.Yep, sorry.. home is the US. I'm hoping to avoid checking anything if possible. We've got some tight connections, so the easier it is to get from place to place, the better. But perhaps that is the way to go!