UPDATE: I spent the last half hour writing and editing this post, and see you just cancelled. Well, I’m still going to post what’s below anyway after spending that bit o’ time 😃
…approx £150 shipping to Australia…
… If anyone can recommend a scanner in Melbourne, Australia that would be appreciated so that it keeps costs lower
Assuming the listing you’re talking about it the same one I just looked up…
That seller is in the UK, and that region has some world-class scanning facilities I believe. E.g., Arrow is in the UK. So, ponder this longish shot: maybe the seller drives by Arrow on his/her way to work each day and if so then maybe he/she would be open to just dropping it off? I mean, shipping a full 35mm print is a pain in the ass, so if the longshot happens to be so, he/she might well much prefer just dropping the thing off at a scanner if in their area rather than deal with packing, shipping, tracking the thing across the globe, would maybe just charge you £5 for petrol. 😃
So, to reword it: check out the great scanners in the UK, then pass those addresses to the seller with querying if a scanner just happens to be in their area, and if so would they be willing to just drop the print off. After the scan, you’d be dealing with the shipping person at Arrow (or whoever) who of course has vast experience shipping prints around the world, which might be better in some ways than having the seller ship it to you.
Of course if Melbourne happens to have a great scanning facility (that you can just drive the print to personally) then groovy. It’s just that when I saw the seller is in the UK it clicked in my head they do some great scanning there in more than one place IIRC. (Melbourne… Since that’s your city, can’t you just do a local look up, make a few phone calls yourself? You wouldn’t even need to use long-distance minutes 😃)
Hopefully a user or two here who has checked into scanning in the UK will chime in here. I have no experience with this, am just going off of reading these forums over the years.