The first thing the Indonesian man did was collect all the passports. They were told they would be leaving without any ID. (Esmail understood the passports were sent back to the Pakistani forgers for reprocessing using different photographs.)
No-one complained as they were now completely at the mercy of the smugglers.
From Jakarta they were driven south for around four hours to a small coastal town and parked at another staging point where they were told some of them would be leaving the next day. Esmail was one of those who departed in the morning.
The sea trip was uneventful. The cramped boat stank of fumes and the toilets became blocked after a few hours. Fifty or more people, mostly men, took turns at cooking rice and bits of chicken soaked in salty water, much of which finished up overboard as half the occupants were seasick.
Esmail lost count of the days but the boat was soon being escorted to Christmas Island where he was interviewed for two hours and sent to a detention area.
A week later he was flown to Darwin where he was again interviewed, issued with a bridging visa, and flown to Melbourne.
Esmail is now on the Gold Coast, Queensland, sharing a flat with four bridging visa holders. None of the other four works. He now has permanent residency and is studying English at school. He does not wish to work and intends to go to Griffith University next year.
He says he has no interest in Islam but attends a local mosque (only to improve his English he explains). He has applied to have his family accepted under a family reunion provision but believes this may take years, if at all.
Now, I can’t say everything Esmail told me is true but one thing is certain, the level of sophistication in people smuggling has grown exponentially since Rudd dismantled our borders.
The route that Esmail took is just one of the many well-oiled ways for an illegal immigrant to get to Australia.
The pre-Abbott rush with the inevitable loss of life is set to continue and, interestingly, it appears that these passports are not chucked overboard as we have been told, but are returned to Pakistan for recycling.
I wonder if our insulated Canberra politicians understand what is really happening out there.
http://pickeringpost.com/article/one-mans-boat-trip-to-oz/1483So basically they recycle the passports