Natasha Corbin and her fiancé David Daynes fell in love with this stray dog named Munchkin when they lived in Bali. Over the past six years, she has been trying to get Munchkin into Australia.
It was known that the couple had been living in Bali and Corbin operated an online marketing company that could work remotely.
Corbin said, "When we decided to move to Bali, my fiancé gave me a rule: I was not allowed to contact any dog because I was a dog-lover."
"I just ignored all the dogs as much as I could, but the dog, Munchkin, followed us all the way to our villa."
“The reason why we came to New Zealand is that we have to stay here for a while, so that our dog is authorized to arrive in Australia.”
It is known that international pet quarantine restrictions made it easier to bring dogs from New Zealand into Australia than from Indonesia, so the couple chose to move to New Zealand for dogs two years ago.
On this journey, Corbin returned to Quinton for surgery, and now she has been separated from her dog for five months.
In order to ease her feelings, she chose to spend a lot of money. A private aircraft was leased and an attempt was made to sell seats to passengers to offset some of the costs.
She said, “I just want people to go home, and I want to choose the most likely option. If that means that we have to pay extra fees to try to sell these seats (private aircraft) and do all these extra jobs, I would like to do so.”
However, the price of a jet aircraft was not cheap, ranging from $40,000 to $45,000, so Corbin contacted Sunshine Coast communities to look for passengers who also wanted to travel to New Zealand.
Corbin failed to bring the puppy home on several occasions in Bali, so she decided to take it back to Australia, but she was not aware of the difficulties she was going through.
Corbin states: “We were told that this process would take six to eight weeks, at a cost of about $10,000, but it has now taken almost six years.”
"About three years ago, when we spent $40,000, I stopped counting how much we spent."
In order to obtain residency in Australia, Munchkin lived in four foster families in Singapore, including a penthouse apartment, which was very different from her living on the streets of Bali.
Prior to the outbreak, her travel had been hampered by health-related travel restrictions, and she had been bitten by vermin while transiting Singapore.
During that period, Corbin moved back to Bali to fly to Singapore to visit Munchkin once a month.
Munchkin had not passed a health test prior to her entry into Australia, but she finally obtained official permission to enter Australia last week after being declared non-communicable.
The coronary epidemic complicated Corbin's task of taking Munchkin back — ordering a private plane was her only option.
Corbin said: “One of the greatest challenges we face is to take this dog out of New Zealand through Auckland, while flights from the North Island are not considered green areas”.
“In addition, most of the direct flights from South Island, New Zealand, to Quinton have been cancelled and there are virtually no available flights.”
As a result of the new crown segregation restrictions between North Island and Quinton in New Zealand, Daynes will be isolated during Christmas and Munchkin will not be able to travel on commercial flights until January next year.
In response, Corbin said: “For the last two to three years, I have been saying to my partner, `imagining that if anything happens, we will finally send her home on a private plane.”
The next step is to select other passengers and control weight.
Corbin indicated that she was meeting with 11 people from New Zealand through Zoom to determine who could arrange to board a plane to Brisbane in a short time.
She said, "Can book here because we really want to schedule our flight next week."
“I don't know if we can bring seven more people in because of weight constraints, so at this stage we might have five more.”