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
Immigration detention in Australia 2015 people in onshore immigration detention had been there for an average 445 days. The average detention period has increased since May 2014. There were 1792 people in onshore detention, including 91 children, and most were from Iran, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam and Afghanistan. On 26 April 2016, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea ruled that detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island was breaching their constitutional right to freedom and thus illegal, and ordered the Australian-run detention centre to close. However, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton iterated that the 850 asylum seekers were the responsibility of Papua