Excellent question. Members of our club have found a method for shipping beers to competitions that is almost always guaranteed to work: ship the beers with no paperwork in the box, and mail the entry forms/fees separately. Declare the beers as "yeast samples for analysis" and put a note in the box with the beers stating "paperwork to follow in a separate shipment." I don't know about the Australian mail system, but around here Canada Post and the american post office will not ship alcohol. In fact, it's illegal. Yeast samples are okay though.
Declare a value for the shipment of $1 per bottle, no more, no less. Courier companies (some of them) will in fact knowingly ship alcohol, but it's never a good idea to declare this on the package. The issue is that the driver has the ultimate say over what they deliver and can refuse alcohol with no questions asked. And they don't have to return your package either.
It's very important not to have any paperwork in the box that will give away the fact that what is in the bottles is beer. When customs officials open the box, and they will, they'll definitely turf the shipment if the contents of the box don't match the customs declaration. You should mark each bottle with the beer style, but not in words - use the BJCP style number/substyle letter. For instance, if you were entering a traditional bock, put "5B" on the bottle. Either tape a piece of paper with "5B" to the bottle or write it on the cap, but mark it somehow. When customs finds this box marked "yeast samples for analysis" and finds two bottles with a cryptic "5B" on each they have no reason to suspect that these are not yeast samples for analysis. If they open the box and find beer competition entry forms, your shipment hits the garbage.
Mail the paperwork separately and not at exactly the same time so the people behind the counter at the post office don't get suspicious. For entry fees, a cheque will be fine. It will take much longer than a money order to clear, but it's also much cheaper than a money order.
Packing: Courier companies get very angry indeed if a package starts leaking foul smelling black liquid over other packages. Tightly wrap each bottle in kitchen cling film. This will help to hold the shards of glass together should the bottle break. Place this inside of a ziplock plastic food bag - only one bottle per bag. Liberally use bubble wrap, styrofoam, newspaper, etc. to make sure that the bottles aren't able to bang into each other. Place these packed bottles into an inner box, which itself is lined with a plastic bag. Once this inner box is packed tightly, seal the plastic bag. Two layers of plastic help to ensure that even if a bottle does break, it shouldn't leak out of the box.
The inner box should be packed into an outer box. The outer box doesn't have to be a lot larger than the inner box as the goal is to double up the cardboard to prevent punctures in transit. Put the note saying that the paperwork is in a separate letter on the inner box.
Does this help?
