Hundreds of kilometres from Australian cities, asylum seekers awaiting processing are locked into detention camps such as the one at Woomera, in South Australia, on the edge of the Simpson Desert. The former rocket launch site, Woomera has a population of 1800, and is 500km from Adelaide. Recently it was mooted as a site for a nuclear waste dump, through the proposal was turned down by the state government.
The detention centre at Woomera is run by Australasian Correctional Management Ltd, an offshoot of US-based Wackenhut Corrections Corporation.
Helena Janson, a postgraduate journalism student at UTS, joined a group of protestors organised by the Refugee Action Collective. They traveled by bus for 45 hours to visit the site of the detention centre and stage a protest outside the fences. Police were in attendance and turned tear gas and water cannons on the detainees, wo were said to have been rioting and attempting escape.
Helena's account of the protest is published in Reportage; this site displays images from the trip.
Website by Fran Molloy