Are you looking for a particular variety? I will have a look through my seeds to see which varieties I've got. If there's anything you'd like you are welcome to some.

I've met heaps of people lately that have had enough of AQIS (which I think have gone paranoid and/or totaly controlled by big commerical growers lately, ie banana and citrus growers grrrrr). The tighter they make it the more people are going to rebel. I'm going to prepare my speed boat, silencers, night vison and camo gear now ready for the future when no seed can be legaly imported. Eggplant seeds are small anyway, you can eat them at the Lima airport before you come home, you probaly don't even break the law then, kind of

Nicefrog,
Yes, I suspect it's commercial interests that have motivated this change. They now have a whole section on the importing of the fresh and frozen fruit from our neighbours across the Tasman. Methinks the NZ growers have been applying pressure!

Spatz,
No, I wasn't actually looking for eggplants. I just noticed it while looking for something else, also in the genus Solanum.

They'll ban tomatoes next!!!
I responded to the Biosecurity Australia questionnaire because I have brought seeds into Australia in the past. There were a number of plants on their 'not in Aussie as yet list' that I had in the garden so they don't really know what's here and isn't and sometimes I wonder what's behind all the decisions.

I suggest you bring all the tomatoes that you want as soon as possible, import import import : ). If you look at the banned list you can easily see that just about anything that's a big commercial crop is banned, who's to know if the commercial growers are protecting the crappy varieties they have from competition and have to change varieties or if they really are worried about a new virus on their chemical fed immune system deficient crops but you cant help but notice it doesn't have much to do with weeds. You can also notice it has alot to do with plants that can be used for mind altering activities!

Life is short, you only live once and the entire planet will be stuffed in 100 years anyway thanks to the goverments of the world especialy the dodgy enviromental ones like the USA and ours and by that time the only thing that will grow and have a chance of saving us is weeds and we wont have ANY! to grow :(.

For me a cold climate giant banana is the holy grail of plants and I WILL own one one day no matter the law or price or what I have to do to get one or where I have to hide it :P but I'll wait and see if I get a sensible legal option for a couple more years (like making certified tissue cultures legal), It's just a pity it is also enemy number one at Customs, thanks to Queenslands banana growers who allready have every banana disease and are thousands of km's from me. Once my wife who had no idea it was illegal at the time sent me a live daisy flower! imagine that! better still imagine the good cutting I could of had of something instead of that flower if I had of known I would be smuggling something. Anyway I got the flower no problems. Even better than that once for some reason a penfriend sent my brother a jar from the United States of get this....... DIRT! from the garden so he could have a bit of the states or something. Imagine what was in that jar, we never knew it was comming and did the responsible thing.. never opened it, I guess everything that was alive in there is dead now (that was years ago) I figure that's alot worse than my poor old banana seeds and it allready got here, hmmph it's all very frustrating, where's my speedboat

But, on the other hand, things that were forbidden previously are now allowed!! In the latest King Seeds catalogue (originally from NZ), all the LETTUCE seeds and quite a few beans and peas are now on offer to Australian customers... (although Lactuca sativa - on the AQIS webpage - doesn't seem to be allowed).
Rose-Marie

Yes, it's a weird and wonderful world, that of AQIS. On the one hand, I fully support their efforts to prevent the introduction of pests: be they plant, insect, bacteria, fungi etc. On the other hand, they seem to be listening only to big commercial concerns, foreign at that! Moreover, the government's own record at importation is absolutely dismal, with just one or two successes out of a host of disasters. And to cap it all off, I can go to an asian supermarket and buy seeds for cooking that I can't import to grow!! That's alright thoug because I just buy the eating seeds and grow them instead. But I mean, where's the logic?

Solanum, those lettuce etc seeds must have been sourced in Australia. I think we have a big lettuce seed industry in the aphid free areas along the Murray and certainly beans for seed are bred in East Gippsland.

On the first page of the Kings Seeds catalogue, it says that the Head office is in NZ and they have distributors in Australia and Japan. They offer lettuce varieties which I don't recall seeing in Australian catalogues such as Lettuce Cocarde, Canasta or Drunken Woman Fringed Head (I think I would have remembered the last name!).
Rose-Marie

I think you're right Rose-Marie. I suspect Kings have been able to give AQIS some sort of guarantee of health. It's no problem for companies with the facilities to do this. Perhaps it's the next step in a Trans-Tasman Union!

On the other hand...a lettuce called "Drunken Woman Fringed Head" by one company may be just a Cos Verdi (for instance) with a new name and a slightly different write up...or it could be a hybrid or something...the var. names from companies that are not family run mean bliggerall except that they think it will sell heaps of seeds
In other words they may not be new at all
If anyone here is concerned about this issue I would recommend that they join the Seed Savers Network out of Byron bay (if you are not already a member
cheers
Peter

OOOOOOOH, I SEEEEEEE. having less slimy eggplants in the world is a negative thing. I get so confused.