Nico arrived at the Victoria University pool, high on the hill overlooking the parched slope of Footscray Park, the Maribyrnong syrup slow in the late afternoon. He donned his budgie smugglers and hacked through the first ten laps before he fell into a rhythm. It felt good to have a body, to throw it through time and space, purposeful, porpoise-like.

Ali Bakhtiarvandi is an Iranian refugee who arrived in Australia in 2000 at the age of 34. Before receiving his citizenship 2009, Ali was held for four years in three different detention centres around Australia. His story is part of a new oral history project called Behind the Wire, which documents the experiences of men, women and children who have lived in Australian mandatory detention since the policy was introduced by the Keating government in 1992.

We stop at a motel off the shoulder of the highway. I’ve only got doubles left, says the woman behind the counter, are you right to share? We nod and she hands us the key and warns us about the water pressure in the shower. After we’ve unpacked she goes to smoke on the balcony while I buy Fantas from the vending machine downstairs.

Over thirty years ago, three authors embarked on a journey into Roebuck Plains, an area in the north of West Australia, just inland from Broome. The group consisted of Stephen Muecke, an emerging scholar who had just completed a PhD in linguistics, a Moroccan-born painter named Krim Benterrak and Paddy Roe, a Goolarabooloo Elder, a philosopher and storyteller, who was born in Roebuck Plains.