Welcome to our world Gecko...
That is just a small taste of the mentality we have been dealing with for over the past 6 weeks and yes, it has been extremely frustrating and stressful.
The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, not that any of the hands even know what to do when the word reptile is mentioned... it's like alert alert alert, run for your lives, someone is asking about a reptile
And we totally agree... what the hell are they thinking when it comes to giving these so called irresponsible reptile keepers another chance (and it's been at least a dozen chances now) at getting their paperwork together and there actually going to let them take these animals back into care??? Not only were our animals under-nourished and dehydrated, but we saw a few of the other animals also (minus your animal Gecko) that were in poor condition also. We even pointed this out to the park rangers when we were picking our animals up and the response was like... huh, oh ok? Where the hell did they find these people to do this type of work?
And I just laughed when I received an email from Ron Hearring regarding the release of the other 17 animals into our care... he said they were only going to release them to nsw licenced reptile keepers if the accused did not get their paperwork in order on time. I replied back stating how funny it was that Ron was the one that originally emailed us a PDF file that was signed and stated we were to take ownership of the entire 22 animals, this email included what we thought was a legal document and export permit to have all 22 animals seized and handed directly over to us? That was the first notice, then he changed this again when 5pm, the 9th October expired, he then changed this to the 19th October, and after the 19th expired, he changed it to state that only our animals of 4 pythons plus 1 lizard were to be released to us, but only if we could prove they were ours? Now he states he is only going to release the remaining 17 animals on a ballot to nsw licenced keepers only... What A Joke!!!
Not to worry, as this has now been reported to the NSW Ombudsman and they have already advised this is going to go further!