Tens of thousands of parcels headed to Australia get held up by customs every year — usually not because of deliberate smuggling, but because the sender simply didn’t know an item wasn’t allowed. This guide answers exactly what you can mail or bring into Australia: alcohol, tobacco, food, medicine, counterfeit goods and more, with the real rules, risks and practical advice for each category — so your parcel arrives without being seized, fined, or putting your visa at risk.
📦 Route: China → Australia (all mailing and carry-in scenarios)
📅 Content updated:
⚖️ Main regulators: Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF), Australian Border Force (ABF), Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)
Quick Summary: What Can I Mail or Bring Into Australia? #
Australia’s import controls run on two overlapping systems. Biosecurity is handled by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) and mainly targets plants, animals and food. Customs law is enforced by the Australian Border Force (ABF) and covers tobacco, medicines, weapons, counterfeit goods and more. Both systems apply at the same time, which means a single item can breach two sets of rules at once — doubling the chance it gets seized. The table below is a quick reference for the most common item categories:
| Item Category | Carrying In | Mailing In | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alcohol (≤2.25L | 18+) | ✅ Duty-free allowance | ⚠️ Mailable on some routes | must declare |
| Tobacco (≤25g | 18+) | ✅ Duty-free allowance | ❌ Rejected by all warehouses | |
| Prescription medicine (≤3-month supply) | ⚠️ Needs prescription & declaration | ❌ No mailing channel via Ebaoguo | ||
| Supplements/vitamins | ⚠️ Declare | depends on ingredients | ⚠️ Some mailable | confirm first |
| Fresh fruit & vegetables | ❌ Strictly prohibited | ❌ Strictly prohibited | ||
| Commercially packaged food | ⚠️ Declare | depends on category | ⚠️ Depends on category | |
| Meat & meat products | ⚠️ Heavily restricted | must declare | ⚠️ Heavily restricted | |
| Plant seeds | ❌ Import permit required | ❌ Import permit required | ||
| Counterfeit/fake goods | ❌ Seized & destroyed | ❌ Seized & destroyed | ||
| Wood/bamboo products | ⚠️ Declare | depends on treatment | ⚠️ Declare | depends on treatment |
This table is a quick reference only — it’s not a substitute for checking each item individually. Before you travel or ship, we strongly recommend verifying every item through DAFF’s BICON lookup system.
Detailed Rules: What the Official Sources Say #
The sections below are compiled from official releases by Australia’s regulatory agencies, each with a link back to the original source so you can verify the latest version yourself. Rules change as policy shifts, so we recommend double-checking before every shipment.
Incoming Declaration: A Legal Requirement, Not a Suggestion #
Every traveller arriving in Australia by plane or cruise ship is handed an Incoming Passenger Card. It’s a legal document and must be filled out truthfully. It asks whether you’re carrying food, plant material, animal products, medicines and similar items. Once you’re through the arrivals hall, an officer decides whether to inspect you and your luggage based on what you declared. Detector dogs and X-ray scanners catch a very high proportion of undeclared items, so it’s not worth taking the chance.
Alcohol #
- Travellers 18+ (passengers or crew) can bring in 2.25 litres of alcoholic beverages duty-free
- The duty-free allowance covers all alcohol in your accompanied baggage, regardless of where it was bought
- Anything over the limit is subject to customs duty and GST — and once you go over, duty applies to the whole category, not just the excess
- You must declare the excess and provide proof of purchase
- Travellers under 18 have no duty-free allowance at all
- Mailing alcohol into Australia has to satisfy both federal customs rules and state-level liquor licensing laws
- Commercial-quantity alcohol imports require an import permit
- Small quantities of wine for personal use can be mailed on some routes, but the item, quantity and value must be declared accurately
- Ebaoguo supports mailing wine on select routes — contact our customer service to confirm current availability and packaging requirements
- Spirits (baijiu, whisky, etc.) carry higher mailing risk — check with us before you ship
Official reference: Australian Border Force — Duty-Free Concessions
Tobacco #
Since July 2017, Australia has tightened its rules on carrying tobacco. Travellers 18 and over can bring in 25 grams of tobacco in any form duty-free — roughly the equivalent of 25 cigarettes — plus one opened packet of cigarettes. Anything beyond that is subject to steep duty. Nicotine-containing vape liquid is classified as a prescription medicine in Australia, so bringing it in requires a valid prescription from an Australian doctor.
Official reference: Australian Border Force — Tobacco Import Rules
Medicines & Supplements #
Medicine is the most complicated category, because whether something can be imported depends on its actual ingredients — not the product name or packaging. Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) runs a Personal Importation Scheme that, under specific conditions, allows certain medicines not registered in Australia to be imported for personal use.
- If the medicine is prescription-only in Australia, you need a valid Australian prescription or written authority, with a copy included in the parcel
- Maximum 3 months’ supply per import; no more than 15 months’ total supply within any 12-month period
- Must not contain animal- or human-derived material (insulin is an exception, with a prescription)
- Must not be an Australian Controlled Drug — e.g. medicines containing codeine or tramadol
- Cannot be resold or given to anyone outside your immediate family
- Original packaging and labelling must stay intact
- Counterfeit medicine with undeclared ingredients can never be imported, under any circumstances
Official reference: TGA — Can I import medicine for personal use? | TGA — Personal Importation Scheme details
Food (Snacks, Condiments, Dried Goods) #
Food is one of the most frequently seized categories, especially in parcels sent from China. DAFF’s logic is simple: the less processed an item is, the higher the risk and the tighter the control. Commercially packaged, fully processed food — biscuits, sweets, instant noodles — is generally allowed in but still needs to be declared, while fresh, frozen or semi-processed meat, vegetables and fruit are almost universally prohibited.
- Commercially sealed biscuits, sweets, chocolate
- Sealed tea and coffee (no dairy creamer)
- Sealed dried noodles or instant noodles (no meat sachet)
- Sealed nuts (shelled, roasted)
- Sealed soy sauce, vinegar, chilli sauce (plant-based only)
- Sealed sugar, salt, spice powders
- All fresh or frozen fruit and vegetables
- All fresh, frozen or air-dried meat (including sausage, ham, jerky)
- Meat-containing convenience foods (instant noodles with a meat sachet, pork floss, etc.)
- Eggs and egg products (century eggs, salted eggs, etc.)
- Dairy-based infant formula (quantity limits apply)
- Nuts still in their shell, dried flowers with stems or leaves
- Honey and bee products (declare, depends on country of origin)
Official reference: DAFF — Items You Can’t Bring In | BICON Biosecurity Import Conditions
Plants, Seeds & Wood Products #
Australia is one of the most biodiversity-sensitive countries in the world, and its controls on plant material are extremely strict. Live plants, fresh cuttings, and anything with soil attached are almost universally prohibited. Seed imports require a permit and must go through quarantine treatment. Wood products — carvings, bamboo, wicker — need to be declared and must be shown to have had proper heat or fumigation treatment, or they risk confiscation.
Counterfeit Goods & IP Infringement #
Counterfeit branded goods are an absolute import ban under Australian customs law — whether for personal use or commercial purposes, they’re seized and destroyed with no refund and no compensation. ABF enforcement against counterfeits has been tightening in recent years, and the share of parcels getting an X-ray plus manual inspection is rising. If you’ve bought a “high-quality replica” and try to mail it to Australia, the odds of it being caught are much higher than you’d expect.
Official reference: Australian Border Force — Intellectual Property Infringing Goods
Ebaoguo’s Take (For Reference Only) #
On food declarations in practice: A lot of people assume “commercially packaged” means “no need to declare” — that’s wrong. The food question on the Incoming Passenger Card is unconditional: if you’re carrying any food at all, you tick “yes.” After you declare, an officer decides whether to release it based on the specific item. Most sealed snacks get waved straight through, but if you don’t declare and it’s found, even a bag of chips can get you fined.
On Chinese herbal medicine: Regulation of Chinese herbal ingredients in Australia is genuinely complicated. Some dried herbal goods — ginseng, goji berries, red dates — are usually fine to bring in commercially packaged. But anything containing animal-derived ingredients (deer antler, bear bile, tiger bone, etc.) is not only subject to customs control but can also breach CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), carrying criminal penalties. Our advice: declare all herbal goods, and check unfamiliar ingredients on BICON beforehand.
On infant formula quantity limits: Australia limits formula exports (max 2 tins per person per trip), but there’s no explicit quantity cap on imports. That said, if you mail a large quantity of formula, customs may treat it as a commercial import and require duty or import documentation. Our recommendation: keep any single shipment to 4 tins or fewer, and mark the declaration “personal-use infant food.”
On electronics and lithium batteries: Electronics themselves usually aren’t subject to customs restrictions, but shipping lithium batteries is governed by air-safety rules. High-capacity batteries (over 100Wh) can’t be air-freighted as cargo — they can only travel in carry-on baggage. Ebaoguo follows airline regulations when handling parcels containing lithium batteries; some routes may refuse the parcel or require the battery to be removed.
Before You Ship: A Practical Checklist #
- Check BICON item by item. Don’t guess based on experience, especially for food, plant material and medicine — BICON tells you the exact import conditions for a specific item, including whether a permit or quarantine treatment is needed.
- Fill out the declaration honestly. The item name, quantity and value on your customs declaration need to be accurate. Don’t write “gift,” “sample” or “used clothing” to disguise what’s actually inside — a false declaration that gets caught carries much heavier consequences than an honest one.
- Keep proof of purchase. For higher-value items, a receipt helps establish value and avoid customs over-assessing duty.
- Check the packaging is intact. Food items need to stay in their original sealed packaging — opened food is seized far more often than sealed food.
- Contact Ebaoguo customer service first. If you’re not sure whether something can be mailed, check with us before you buy it, not after — returning an item costs a lot more than the few minutes it takes to ask.
- Mooncakes: Plain vegetarian fillings (lotus paste, red bean, five-nut) are usually fine to mail, but meat fillings (like ham mooncakes) are strictly prohibited. Declare as “commercially packaged pastry, no meat.”
- Tea: Sealed, commercially packaged tea is normally fine, but loose tea — especially with stems or leaf fragments — can be classed as plant material and seized. Stick to sealed commercial packaging.
- Chilli sauce: Plant-based chilli sauces (like Lao Gan Ma black bean chilli) are usually fine, but versions containing seafood ingredients such as dried shrimp or shrimp paste need to be declared and may get pulled for inspection.
- Wood carvings or bamboo products: Confirm the seller can provide a heat-treatment certificate, and state the material and treatment method on the declaration.
- Supplements: Vitamins, fish oil, probiotics and similar are usually mailable, but supplements containing animal extracts (deer antler extract, bear bile powder) may breach CITES — check the specific ingredients on BICON before you ship.
Common Myths — And Why They’re Wrong #
How to Ship — 5 Steps #
- Create an account: sign up at dashboard.ebaoguo.com and get your own warehouse address and member number instantly.
- Use the warehouse address at checkout: when ordering from any online store or seller, set the delivery address to your Ebaoguo warehouse address, and add your member number in the address notes.
- Parcel intake: your parcel is photographed and logged automatically when it arrives; you can see the weight, dimensions and photos for every parcel in your dashboard.
- Submit for shipping & pay: in your dashboard, choose the destination country, enter the recipient’s details, upload any required invoice, and pay once you’ve confirmed the shipping cost.
- Track delivery: as soon as payment clears, we dispatch your parcel and give you a tracking number so you can follow it all the way to delivery.
Contact Us #
Updated 2026-07 · Source: Ebaoguo Operations
