Joint Defense Facility Nurrungar Joint Defense Facility Nurrungar Joint Defence Facility Nurrungar (JDFN), located on the edge of Island Lagoon, approximately 15 km south of Woomera, South Australia, was an Earth station in Australia operated jointly by the Australian Department of Defence and the United States Air Force from 1969 through to 1999. Its official area of emphasis was space-based surveillance, in particular the early detection of missile launches and nuclear detonations using U.S. Defense Support Program satellites in geostationary orbits. The name "Nurrungar" derives from an aboriginal term meaning "listen". During the Cold War the site was crucially important to America's defences, being
Asylum in Australia asylum seekers arriving by boat in the late 2000s and early 2010s, which was met with some public disapproval. In 2011-2012, asylum seekers arriving by boat outnumbered those arriving by plane for the first time. Three waves of asylum seekers arriving by boat have been identified: Vietnamese between 1976 and 1981; Indochinese asylum seekers from 1989 to 1998; and people of Middle East origin, and the use of people smugglers, from 1999. The visa policy of the current government is to detain persons entering or being in Australia without a valid visa until those persons can be returned to their