Buying presents for family living abroad

My son lives in NZ so I find a supplier over there to order from. It's nice to support businesses local to him.

I use Baby Bunting and Toy Universe in Australia for good gift for babies and children. For mum and dad I use Gourmet Hampers in Australia with a wide selection too. My lot love them. You can also order from M&S.com Australia and if you spend over a certain amount delivery is free and arrives in one week usually.
I’ve used all these very successfully.

What about Australian Amazon? They will gift wrap and deliver. Or find a local company near to where they live to deliver. I had a local company in Sydney deliver a Christmas hamper to my friends there.

Our postal service is totally dire in Australia. They actually announced they were freezing deliveries for a week because they could not cope. These days we only get 2 deliveries a week on a good week and we are in the suburbs, not out in the bush. It costs heaps,too but that happens when things get privatised I suppose. Don’t get me started …..

To be honest, we agreed many years ago to stop sending gifts as it was becoming ridiculously expensive when postage was added and also, didn’t really know what to buy anyway as we all had what we needed or could save up and get it when we did need it, so settled on just sending a nice card and a phone call, the latter being much more precious to me. I suppose it must be different if it’s children you have abroad, but for me it is a sibling and their children and now their children. We’ve just agreed to do similar with other family members in this country, too. The whole present giving thing was becoming a nightmare, knowing what to buy within a given budget as we are all now either retired or approaching it. The commercial side of Christmas won’t profit much from us this year, and to be honest, it’s a relief.

I sent a thin scarf to Europe recently which fitted into a normal sized envelope, I had it weighed and if I wanted it tracked post was £10. It took nearly 2 weeks to get there.