Honesty is the Best Policy

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to land into Brisbane International Airport. We have a small boy in the back of the plane, however, that has a slight cough. Due to Quarantine regulations, we are going to ask that everyone remain seated with your seatbelt fastened, once we reach the gate, until a Quarantine Officer can come aboard and have a look at the young lad."
As we flew from Papua New Guinea down to Australia, we were required to fill out a Health Check form for the Australian Quarantine Officials. This was due to the "Swine Flu" scare. Australia has always been very strict with their quarantine rituals, and rightfully so. Because the form asked specifically if you have a cough, headache (although I thought this one was rather random), fever, shortness of breath or other flu-like symptoms, we felt that we should be honest. After all, here was Wiley coughing quite regularly and it would be fairly difficult to hide that from any officials. Not as easy to do with a one year old as it might be for people to hide the fact that they did have a headache, but marked NO on the form. (I still find it odd that we were the only people on the whole plane who could say YES to any of those symptoms.) Knowing the stiff penalties of Australia, we just wanted to be honest.
The plane pulled up to the gate, and we sat there. Nobody entered the plane and nobody was allowed to get up. Finally, the silence was broken once again with an announcement, "Ladies and Gentlemen, again we are just waiting on a Quarantine Officer to come and check out the little boy in the back of the plane. Shouldn't take long. In the meantime, we have begun re-fueling the aircraft and we are not allowed to have passengers with their seatbelt on while doing this. Please remove your seatbelt, but do not get out of your seats until the little boy has been checked. (People are starting to look at us at this point since we are sitting on the last row and have a little boy who happens to cough every now and then.)
Finally, we see him. A man in a "Swine Flue Mask" (as we have seen them advertised for sale in stores here in Cairns) walking down the aisle to the back of the plane. He finds us and first asks us to put one of the masks (child-size with Disney characters) on Wiley. Yeah right. That wasn't happening as Wiley refused and fought every attempt. The Officer proceeded with his routine questions of whether or not we have recently been in the US or Mexico. How long has he had the cough and if he had any other symptoms. We explained that Wiley was coming off of an ear infections (still on the antibiotics) and had no other symptoms. After several more questions, they eventually let the rest of the passengers get off the plane and we followed shortly behind. The Officer escorted us inside and we were led through an area that appeared to have video cameras set up. We were told to walk separately through this area. Apparently, it was taking our body temperature. Daddy was holding Wiley and they appeared to have borderline high temperature, but not enough to worry about. After this, we still had to be seen by additional Quarantine Officers, which included a Nurse. He asked a few questions, but was not concerned by us so let us go on through after taking a few details from us. We were finally cleared, but still got a few looks from fellow passengers as we collected our luggage.
Ironically, after hearing and seeing that the cough was perhaps just part of the ear infection, or at least was no way a symptom of "Swine Flu," the Officer told us that we should have just marked NO on the form. We could have avoided having to be seen by the Nurse. As it turned out though, being seen by the Nurse helped us avoid having to stand in the long lines of people at Immigration. Proving once again that Honesty really is the best policy.