How to fast-track a passport in less than 48 hours

The following words don’t come with any guarantee but I promise this will be your best possible chance of fast-tracking a passport.

Sydney’s passport office offers an express service where you pay an emergency fee of $178 (burglary) on top of $282 (highway robbery) for the cost of a passport.  That’s pretty much the first $500 of your holiday money gone before you’ve exited the country.  The emergency fee guarantees you a passport in 48 hours.  But is it possible to get a passport that same day?

It was incredibly interesting (and sad) to hear readers filling me in on how they have been in the same situation as me – at the airport being refused a boarding pass because your passport’s expiring in the next six months.  The information gleaned from these ‘experts’ resulted in me experiencing a miracle and I will now hand down to you their words of wisdom.

You need to be at the passport office long before it opens.  That means arriving at about 7.45am and staring through the locked glass doors of the lobby trying to attract sympathy.  If you’re lucky, a security guard will approach and tell you he will let you in if you are buying a coffee (there’s a coffee shop in the lobby).  You’re definitely buying a coffee.

Coffee in hand, you need to loiter by the lifts.  You won’t be allowed up until 8.30am (it operates like a bank) but you do want to be first in the lifts so stand as close to the lift doors as the security guard will allow.  Trust me now, you won’t be the only one there.  A long queue of people will begin to appear similar to those assembled before the opening of the Boxing Day sales.

After shifting weight from one foot to the other for 45 minutes, the security guard will announce, ‘The lifts are now open’.  Don’t hesitate.  You need to charge to the lifts scanning for which one will open its doors first.  When inside, don’t go to the back.  I know that’s the polite thing to do but just leave the niceties aside for now.  When the doors open on Level 7 you will be first out of the lift then you need to run.

Once inside the doors of the passport office do not stop at the machine that punches you out a ticket.  That is the grave error of amateurs.  Instead, turn right and race to one of the two counters at the end of the room.  If you’re lucky, you’ll be like me and first in line.  This is a stressful time and the build-up to this moment from Friday to Monday had me almost hyperventilating.

I was served by the same woman who served me on Friday afternoon.  I rushed at her, ‘Do you remember me?’  And she said she did.  She said, ‘You need to calm down.  Just take some deep breaths’.

I said, ‘I’m very anxious’.

‘Did you bring the forms I told you to bring?’  You need the renewal form.  I had that and handed it over.  You also need a good story and evidence as to why you need your passport so quickly.  I gave her the invitation to my father’s 80th birthday party that was to be held in Bali the very next day.  She looked it over as I sweated bullets then stamped my paperwork as ‘urgent’.  That’s what you want.  You need that stamp.

Sad story at the counter next to me.  A man who had been queuing in the lobby for as long as me was turned away.  He was told to go away and put his application in online.  No idea the reason but he wasn’t going to be flying out that day or the next.

Then I had to go around the corner for an interview.  They say the first interviews are at 9am but I was called up at 8.45am so be ready.  Trembling through the ordeal of trying to justify the urgency factor, I paid the fee and was then asked for a print-out of my flight details.  Didn’t have one.  Had to open up my laptop and email a copy to him which he then waited for then downloaded, then printed, then attached to my form.  The clock was ticking.  I was looking at my watch thinking it was now 9am and I had to have my passport in exactly five hours.  Would it happen?

He stamped my forms and said, ‘Come back around two and wait for it to be ready’.

‘It won’t be ready by two?  I really need to be leaving for the airport by then’.

He shrugged.  ‘Come back at 1.30 then; we’ll see what happens’.

I took myself and my luggage out of the building and to a cafe near Central Station.  I sat there with my laptop open tracking my passport’s progress.  It was 20% complete.  Every 15 minutes I kept refreshing the page.  It didn’t budge from 20%.  I texted a friend who had told me that a few days before Christmas she was flying to Japan with her husband and three children.  She was turned away for the same reason.  I told her that in three hours there had been no progress from 20%.  She said that was what had happened to her but then suddenly it jumped to 80% and a few minutes later it said it was ready for collection.  So I sat in that cafe.  At 1pm still no progress.  I couldn’t sit there any longer.

I towed my luggage back to the passport office and stood in the queue for that woman who served me before.  In the queue a young girl said to me, ‘I’m going to Thailand.  I’m going to go on a water slide’.  I looked at her mother who looked like she was about to have a breakdown.  She and her husband and their two small children had been turned away from the airport.  Their flight was leaving at 2pm.   There would be no going down a water slide that day for sure.

When it was finally my turn I asked the woman if there was a problem.  She looked me up on the computer and to be sure, there was a problem.  Nothing had happened.  Nothing in that four hours.  Somehow my application stamped ‘urgent’ had fallen by the wayside.  I could barely breathe.  She looked at me and said, ‘Well we don’t promise a passport any sooner than 48 hours’.  Warning:  The staff are VERY DEFENSIVE.  While I was there I saw people exhibit the same range of emotions you see in the Emergency Department.  People are hanging on by a thread and I’m quite sure the staff get a lot of abuse.  She said, ‘Wait over there’ and to approach her every 15-minutes to see how my application was progressing.  And she said I didn’t have to wait in the queue but could stand close by and she would call me up.

I did that every 15-minutes until 2pm.  My heart was sinking.  Another family near me was coming to the realisation they wouldn’t be catching their flight that day or the next day.  They’d arrived at the passport office at 9am.  By then the queue was so lengthy there was no hope for them.  I heard the story of another couple who arrived at the airport post-wedding ready for their honeymoon in Thailand.  The husband’s passport only had four months left on it and so they weren’t able to fly.  They had to cancel the trip and never had a honeymoon.

At 2pm the woman told me it wasn’t ready but to join the queue to collect my passport in the hope it would be ready by the time I reached the front of the queue.  Righto.  The line was so long and I wondered what would happen to me if I pushed in.  Finally, I was at the front and called to the counter.  There was no passport.  ‘Could you check out the back?’  So she heaved and sighed and strolled out the back door.  And came back empty handed.  ‘It’s not ready.  I’ll call you as soon as it is’.  It was 2.20pm and I my flight was leaving in two hours and twenty minutes.  It wasn’t looking good.  Tears welled in my eyes.  ‘Well don’t go getting upset.  We don’t promise passports in less than 48 hours’.  Slight over-reaction to my watery eyes.  ‘Just wait over there and I’ll call you when it’s ready’.

So I hovered with my luggage just a little way back from the counter, right where she could still see me and not forget I was there.  I texted the kids in Bali letting them know it was unlikely I would make the flight.  At 2.30pm my name was called.  I ran to the counter.  ‘Do I just take it or do I have to sign something’.

‘You need to check your name is spelt correctly’.  At that point I couldn’t have cared less what they called me.  But it was all good.  ‘Enjoy your flight’, the lady said.

I gathered all my things and said, ‘Excuse me, excuse me’ to try and push through all the people in an effort to get to the lift.  The security guard was very kind and rushed to my aid and helped me down the lift and past all the people so I could exit the building more quickly, then unlocked a door to the side of the building for me.  He yelled ‘Good luck’, as I lifted my luggage down a flight of stairs then entered the tunnel at Railway Square and jogged to Platform 23 at Central Station.

After carrying my luggage up three flights of stairs to the platform, I just missed a train.  I had a seven-minute wait for the next one.  Seven minutes is a really long time.  I got on the train and willed it forward.  Redfern, Green Square, Mascot, Domestic Airport, International Airport.  I’d arrived.  I hurtled myself up escalators and lifts and stairs and corridors then ran to Counter J which seemed about a kilometre away.  Would the check-in counter still be open?

I couldn’t believe it but it was.  I joined the queue.  When it was my turn the woman behind the counter said, ‘There’s a problem with your passport’.  If ever there was a moment where I thought I’d break down, that was it.

‘What problem?’

‘Is this a new passport?’

‘Very new.  Just got it.  Twenty minutes ago’.

‘Okay.  Because it hasn’t been updated with the Department of Immigration.  Just a minute’.  My legs went to jelly.  I looked around for a courtesy wheelchair.

She came back.  It’s fine.  It’s being done now.  You can go through the gates.  I didn’t need to hear that twice.  I ran.  I had a problem with Immigration and was told to ‘stand to the side’ but that was quickly resolved and then it was time to hurry for the plane.  No time to shop for a book or a magazine or pick up some duty-free, just straight to the gate.  I was last on the plane but I’d made it.

And that’s how you do it.  With helpful advice, a strategy, a few prayers and a lot of luck, I achieved a passport in just six hours.  Bali here I come.