Where your pet can land: Melbourne, and only Melbourne

Last verified: 2026-08-25

The answer

Cats and dogs must arrive directly into Melbourne International Airport. From there the department transfers them to the post-entry quarantine facility.

They cannot land at another Australian airport and travel on to Melbourne by domestic flight. Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide are not options for the arrival leg, however convenient they are for you.

Why this constrains the whole itinerary

Your pet’s route and your route are two separate plans that happen to share a destination country. Yours ends where you are moving to; your pet’s ends at Melbourne, then quarantine, then a domestic journey to you afterwards.

That means:

• The international leg must terminate at Melbourne. A carrier that serves Australia but not Melbourne cannot carry your animal on the arrival leg.
• “Direct” is about the arrival, not about non-stop. The requirement is that the animal arrives into Melbourne on its international flight, rather than entering Australia elsewhere and connecting domestically.
• Your own flight is unconstrained. Because the animal travels as manifest cargo on its own air waybill, it does not have to be on your flight — and often is not.
• Getting from Melbourne to your city afterwards is a separate arrangement made after quarantine release.

Plan the pet’s route first

The usual mistake is booking your own move — flights, shipping, a start date at a new job — and then discovering the animal’s route has to be rebuilt around Melbourne and around the handful of carriers that will accept it as cargo on that leg.

The animal’s itinerary is the constrained one. Build it first, then fit your own around it.

What this page does not tell you

• Which airlines fly live animals into Melbourne, on which routes and aircraft.
• Transit rules for countries you pass through — a separate layer with its own requirements, not yet covered here.
• Private and chartered flights, which land at a Victorian first-point-of-entry airport under a different set of conditions — see private and chartered flights.
• Where the quarantine facility is, or how the transfer from the airport works.
• When your pet travels from Melbourne to your home city, which depends on a release date you do not control — but the carriers and the choices are covered in onward domestic travel.