On Easter in 2002, about a thousand activists converged on the Woomera detention center in the desolate South Australian desert. They tore down the center’s fences, helping thirty-five refugees who were facing deportation escape.

The Woomera breakout took place a decade after Paul Keating’s Labor government had legislated to allow for the indefinite, mandatory detention of any person who arrived in Australia without a valid visa. Many people see it as an early high point in the campaign for refugees’ rights. In combination with hunger strikes and riots inside the detention Center that the detainees themselves had initiated, the action helped to catapult the asylum seekers’ cause into the national spotlight.

Nearly thirty years after Keating’s move, the movement to free the refugees imprisoned by it celebrated another victory. In January 2021, fifty-six refugees who had been medically evacuated from offshore detention to the Australian mainland met their supporters on the steps of the Park Hotel in the heart of Melbourne to celebrate their newly won freedom.