Woomera, South Australia Immigration Detention Centre, and the return of the site to the ADF, Woomera West was redesigned, altered, and re-established as a secure defence garrison support facility and renamed 'Camp Rapier'. It is now frequently used by the Australian Army and squadrons of the RAAF's Airfield Defence Guards as a base camp for specialized training and testing activities. It also has had a detachment of Australian Air Force Cadets from South Australia stay there. Post-2003, the village population stabilized at about 400, but has subsequently dropped to around 150-200. When the RAAF assumed operational command of Woomera in 1999, there was
Asylum in Australia end of World War II almost 200,000 European refugees settled in Australia. Australia was reluctant to recognise a general "right of asylum" for refugees when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted. The White Australia policy was responsible for the exclusion of Asians from migration to Australia until 1973. The first recorded instance of asylum seekers arriving in Australia via unauthorised boat occurred in April 1976. Fleeing South Vietnam after the Communist Party victory of 1974, an estimated 2,000 "Vietnamese boat people" followed from 1976–1982. The sporadic arrival of unauthorised boats was a cause of concern for the