I lost my passport overseas. Here’s how I got home without it

As I sit here writing this at my desk in Melbourne, my passport is stuck at Auckland Airport Police Station. Somewhere, somehow, I lost it on a recent trip to New Zealand.

So, you might be thinking, if my passport is in Auckland, and I’m in Australia, how did I get home without it?

Let’s start at the beginning. After decades of travel characterised by an obsessive fear of losing my passport or having it stolen, I dropped my guard and misplaced it. Precisely how, where and when I will likely never know.

Justine Costigan’s passport is awaiting pick-up at Auckland Airport.Credit: iStock

The joke of it is, I wasn’t exhausted from a 24-hour long-haul flight, I hadn’t ordered one Bloody Mary too many, I wasn’t traumatised by excessive turbulence or watching too much reality TV on the plane. No, I had an uneventful flight from Melbourne, and was as fresh as you can be after spending 3½ hours trapped in a metal flying tube.

As we arrived in Auckland late at night, I didn’t make the discovery until the next morning. You can imagine the horrible sinking feeling, quickly followed by the panicked search of all my belongings, the mental retracing of my steps since my arrival, then the inevitable journey through anger, denial and acceptance.

Luckily, I knew (more or less) what to do. In any case, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s helpful “My passport has been lost or stolen. What do I do?” page had all the information I needed. I called the local consulate, and a kind and calm passport officer reassured me my passport would likely be handed in. She recommended I report my loss to the police, then emailed me a list of clear instructions for what to do next.

I had two options: cancel my passport and apply for an emergency replacement, meaning I’d have to cut short our plans so I could stay in Auckland to book an appointment at the consulate and organise all the required documents and photos, or just wait to see if it turned up.

If the passport didn’t turn up, I would be able to make an “undocumented uplift”, a concept that immediately conjured an image of Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible-style, descending from a helicopter to lift me to safety but, in reality, simply meant travelling without the correct documentation. I would just need a driver’s licence, Medicare card or other ID to confirm who I am.

I decided to hope the passport would turn up, with the undocumented uplift as my backup plan. And then, crisis temporarily averted, I continued my travels without giving my passport problem too much thought. If that sounds too relaxed, I also used the SavvyShield app to freeze access to my credit report (so no-one would be able to use my identity to access credit in my name), just in case.

A week later, when it was time to head back to the airport, I arrived early so I would have time to speak to the Jetstar duty manager and explain my situation. I showed him my ticket details, driver’s licence and a photo of my passport (I keep one in the cloud). My identity was confirmed by a call to Border Force (who seem to know exactly where we are at all times), my boarding pass was issued, luggage checked, and 10 minutes later I was on my way.

I was reassured that my arrival at customs and the boarding gate would be flagged to smooth my journey (it wasn’t, meaning I had to re-explain my situation every step of the way) and that was that. It was surprisingly easy.

When my flight landed in Melbourne and I turned on my phone, an email from the Auckland Airport Police was waiting for me. My passport had been found.

This is where I should be writing “and everyone lived happily ever after” but working out how to get my passport back has been the most challenging part of this situation. The Auckland Airport Police require a signature-on-delivery courier envelope, with my details pre-filled.

I turned to NZ Post for help: Would a staff member be able to fill out the International Express envelope for me, and place it in another envelope to send to the police? Sadly, they would not. But they did send me a complicated set of instructions requiring someone on the ground in New Zealand. I enlisted the help of my lovely friend Miranda in Wellington, but when she went to the post office, NZ Post said it couldn’t be done, suggesting I just forget about my passport and get a new one. Sweet as.

Another lovely friend in Australia has a colleague in Auckland who’s flying to Australia soon who may be able to collect it for me. I’m also looking at other courier services and hope one of these options will be acceptable to the police.

As a last resort, I’ve started looking at cheap flights to Auckland. Now that I know how to travel without a passport, I might just go and get it myself.