SOME are stuck, their spirits broken and their money gone. They are unable to move. Others are just waiting for the right deal and are ready to make the journey at a moment's notice.
At the mountain resort town of Puncak, two hours south of Jakarta, an estimated 400 Iraqis and Afghans, including Naghmeh and her son Milad, are scattered about in rundown inns and hotels. Most of them barely know each other but they are united by a common obsession - getting to Australia. The Indonesian authorities know they are here, as do the Australian government and agencies such as the International Organisation for Migration and the UN High Commission for Refugees.
Most of them are registered as refugees with the UNHCR, and are waiting and praying for legal settlement in countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
But they say the UN moves too slowly for them. Those with the money will take their chances with the people-smugglers and book a passage on an Indonesian boat to Ashmore Reef or
to Christmas Island - anywhere, as long as it is within Australian waters.
There is a surge happening, with 10boats, carrying 542 passengers and crew, arriving in Australian waters last month alone. Another boat, carrying 55 people, was intercepted yesterday near Ashmore Reef. Observers say it is either an organic spike, or it may be that people have chosen to move before the monsoon weather sets in.
But all the people The Weekend Australian spoke to were sure of the new ground rules in Australia - that is, that anyone who makes it to Australian waters will, if they pass the health and security checks, be on the mainland with a visa within 90 days.
Samer, a 31-year-old Iraqi now living in Puncak, knows all about Kevin Rudd and his new immigration rules. "I know Kevin Rudd is the new PM," he says. "I know about him. He has tried to get more immigrants. I have heard if someone arrives it is easy. They have camps, good service and if someone arrives they give us a limited visa and after three years you become an Australian citizen."
The Howard government's Pacific Solution is dead, and they know it.
That is why Australian police are working in Indonesia trying to encourage people to turn back before they arrive in Australian waters. In places such as Sri Lanka, the source of a recent wave of boatpeople after the civil war, Australia is using street theatre to spread its message about the dangers and illegality of the journey in an effort to deter people-smugglers and those who use them. In Colombo, the first failed asylum-seekers to be forcibly deported by the Rudd government, including Stanley Warnakulasuriya, face an uncertain future.
Australia funds the IOM to accommodate irregular arrivals in places such as Puncak, and to offer them the opportunity to volunteer for free repatriation. Few take it.
The IOM's best estimate is that there are several thousand Afghans and Iraqis in Indonesia, trying to find a route south.
While many in Puncak identify as Afghans, they may not have lived in that country for years. One such is Ali, 18, who was born in Afghanistan but was taken to Iran with his mother, brother and sister when he was three after his father was killed by enemies.
Ali says life in Iran was unbearable, and his family were never accepted into the Iranian community. "They do not treat us as friend but as enemy," he says.
His family gathered the money from their dressmaking business and have sent Ali to find a path to Australia, and with any luck to bring the rest of them later.
Ali says he has never possessed an official document that identifies him. If he gets to Australia, how will he prove he is who he says he is? He does not know. "I am not Taliban," he says.
Ali left Iran seven months ago with $US5000 ($5535). He flew to Malaysia, which provides immediate tourist visas on arrival to visitors from Muslim countries. He stayed for four months, hooking up with four other Afghan teenagers. With safety in numbers, they each paid $US800 to a local agent, who brought them on a boat to western Sumatra.
They island-hopped on ferries to Jakarta, where they immediately registered with the UNHCR. This gave them a modicum of security. Those who do not register can find themselves locked away in one of Indonesia's 12 detention centres.
They have no faith that the UNHCR will find a Western country to take them, so they stay in contact with a Jakarta-based Afghan people-smuggler. He is asking $US6000 to deliver them to Australian waters.
It is too much money for Ali, who is waiting for the price to drop. He says he would prefer to enter Australia legally, but he is running out of time and money.
"If I get a suitable price, I will take a boat," he says. "I have to go. I have to take my chances."
Migration experts in Indonesia dismiss the notion that there is a "snake-head" - that is, a major international criminal syndicate moving Afghans and Iranians from Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran to Australia.
"If there was a snake-head, we could simply cut off the head," said one source. "But it's not like that. It's the lack of any highly organised structure that is in fact its strength. It's more like a series of travel agencies."
The Australian Federal Police are working on a training program with Indonesian police to tackle the irregular migrants, as they are called in Indonesia, but it's a battle. They have identified 12 key departure points across Indonesia, but these are only temporary. Once the heat is on, the smugglers just shift location.
The Indonesian navy last month intercepted a boatload of 70 Afghans headed for Australia. They were put in a low-security detention centre on the island of Lombok. On the evening of September 23, during Ramadan, their guards were elsewhere or were looking the other way (during Ramadan, you are required to be kind to all people).
They walked out the door and have now broken up into smaller, less conspicuous groups and have scattered across the islands. They will presumably try again.
During 2000 and 2001, the time of the Tampa crisis, women and children were making the journey. Now it is almost exclusively men, who hope to settle and bring their families afterwards. We did meet one rare Afghan woman, Naghmeh, 28, who was living in a decrepit motel in Puncak with her 10-year-old son Milad. She was originally from the Oruzgan province of Afghanistan but left for Iran as a child., She still considers herself an Afghan.
Naghmeh, who has Asiatic features and could pass as an Indonesian, has been a refugee nearly all her life. She says her husband had hardline religious views. "I didn't want to be with him," she says. "I want to be secular."
Naghmeh says she flew from Iran to Dohar and then to Singapore. She arrived in Jakarta in January. She had paid $US6000 to an agent in Iran, which was for her airfares and boat travel to Australia. "The agent took the money and ran," she said.
Naghmeh and Milad are trapped in Puncak. Many are in a similar fix, running down their money and marking time. For registered refugees, the UNHCR will eventually come through with subsistence cash - 1.77 million rupiah a month ($210). But the Afghans say it takes seven to eight months to start receiving it.
Thair, 23, is an Iraqi who fled to Syria in 2007. He is yet another male emissary, sent by his family to make his way to Australia. He says he is surviving on the UNHCR money, hoping he will be legally resettled in Australia.
"You know why people take the boats?" he says. "They are waiting too long here in Indonesia. We are all registered with the UNHCR, but we wait, wait, wait. Every day I die here. I can't eat, I can't sleep. Now I want to go back home, but I cannot go back home.
"I do not want to catch a boat. The ocean is not easy. I want to build my life. I want to change my life, to get married, to go to Australia."
Muhammad, 16, from Kandahar in Afghanistan, is another recent arrival. His money is running low but he is hoping to buy a passage with $US2000. He has been told the weather is turning bad and that he may have to wait three months. Some of the Afghan refugees have heard about the SIEV36 explosion at Ashmore Reef on April 16, in which five of their countrymen died. They have also heard that anyone who makes it to Australian waters is almost guaranteed fast processing. "Everybody knows about the 90 days," says Muhammad.
They know little about Australian politics, but they do know something has changed. And that it is not hard to become an Australian if you can only make the crossing.
A group of Afghan teenage youths, who are yet to receive the UNHCR allowance, eat two meals a day - rice with a salad of cucumbers, onions and tomatoes. They insist we share their food. They say they want Australians to know their stories. They have many stories, but they're all the same. They are the last hope of their families back home. Ali says he wants to continue in the dressmaking trade. Matin wants to be a mechanic. Muhammad would like to study medicine, and Amir wants to be a carpenter.
These teenagers describe themselves as Muslim, but just outside their rented home, for which they pay about $100 a month, there is a small musholla, or prayer room, which is used by local Indonesians. They do not use it. They indicate, in circumspect fashion, that the last thing they're interested in is religion. It has been the cause of all their problems.
Samer, 31, says he was a photo-journalist in Baghdad and has a picture of himself in a media flak jacket with a press badge and a camera around his neck. He says he worked for One World magazine and fled after he was threatened by terrorists. He went to Syria but says local intelligence agents put the heavies on him to become a spy. "They're like Gestapo," he says, "and I could not tell them I support America." He caught a plane to Doha, and then on to Malaysia, where he applied through the UNHCR to become a refugee.
"I got no help from them," he says. "They are useless."
He says he was dumped in a jungle in Sumatra and caught ferries and buses across to Jakarta.
"So many Afghans here in Puncak have been cheated. The people who organise to get you on the boat are wealthy Afghans or Iraqis who live here. I met one; I didn't trust him. He says to give him $4000 and after a few days we'll move to a boat. There were no guarantees."
Thair says he has heard from friends that Australia is clean and peaceful. But for now, he doesn't know what he's going to do. He was so terrified catching the boat from Malaysia to Indonesia that he refuses ever to go on one again.
Thair is afraid of going back to Iraq, but he believes taking a voluntary repatriation is his only option. "I was so stupid coming here," he says.
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