Walking into the centre that first time the very first thing I see is a familiar tableau of my faith: Mother and Child, seated, the sweep of the lines of the mother's body sculpting a circle of security and warmth around the gentle wrigglings of her baby. Except that this is no Christian Madonna.
Dressed in traditional attire, she is a young Muslim woman, perhaps in her early 30s, quiet, gentle and shy. Seated on her lap is a little child who has my heart the minute I lock eyes with her.
Her head is framed by a halo of jet-black hair that fans out chaotically in all directions. She has a permanent look of sleepy surprise, at having woken in such a strange world.
Occasionally, and not nearly often enough, a lopsided smile breaks through her incredulity. It has since become something of a weekly mission of mine to tease that smile into more regular existence. I guess I feel that if that is still possible, in this place, then there is still hope. For all of them. For all of us.
Dancing around our Mother and Child is a skinny, black-haired seven-year-old girl with the same lopsided smile, and with far, far too much energy for the space permitted her. She is so full of life and joy that it beggars belief that this place is able to contain her. It certainly tries.
If she was shy, withdrawn, fearful, that would be okay. That would be expected. But she is none of those things. Not now, at least. That she dances around the visitor centre with the unselfconscious ease that my own children, your children, would the family living room is what brings me completely undone.
Because this is not a family living room, this is no place for a child, not for this child, or for any of the 16 or so others currently imprisoned there.
(Yes, let's stop saying 'detained'. People are 'detained' for a few days, weeks, perhaps a couple of months. When you have spent most — and for some of the younger ones, all — of your childhood behind bars, then you are most definitely imprisoned. Everyone in this place is.)
This is my 'initiation' to the visitor centre at Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation, MITA. Don't let the name fool you. From what I can see, there's not a lot of 'transitting' getting done there.
And it is all too clear from the industrial size steel gates around the perimeter, the layers of security personnel and procedures, the self-locking doors that slam shut behind you and the constant surveillance, that this is a prison.
We have allowed successive governments to let this place become 'home' for some of the most vulnerable children and adults you are ever likely to encounter. That my seven-year-old friend accepts this as her 'normality' is a crime against her childhood, and an affront to any notion of human decency.
And it's not just the children. There are beautiful, young, intelligent, articulate, creative people who we are slowly wearing down — too many we have already worn down — to such a point of hopelessness and despair that conversations become dangerously peppered with thoughts of death and dying.
There are parents, desperately concerned for the wellbeing and future of their children, who should be free to begin rebuilding a sense of security and safety for their fragile families.
There are older people who have been through and witnessed so much horror in their lives, and yet despite all that, long only for freedom, and a chance to make their contribution to community life.
And those children, and the babies, with a few more on the way. We have locked them all up, indefinitely, and we are stealing their hope, in an ongoing act of profound inhumanity.
It is incredibly distressing to see first hand the harm we are doing to the fragile hearts and minds of these people — many of whom have become friends. I come home most weeks and cry. Some well-meaning people close to me have asked why I continue to go.
That's easy. Because as miserable a place as MITA is and despite our appalling treatment of them, these people we treat worse than criminals are in fact the most incredibly warm, funny, courageous, passionate, peaceful, gentle, humble, hospitable people you could hope to meet.
Hospitable, you might ask? In that place? Oh yes! You'd be amazed at the ingenuity, and dignity, that can produce a café-worthy cappuccino out of a tin of International roast for a guest.
Oh, how I hope I get to experience what some of them might manage with a fully functional kitchen! How I hope — and pray — our Australian community recovers the good sense and decency to take the opportunity to be enriched by the contribution of this inspiring group of people who have so very much to offer us.
Rev Lisa Stewart is a Uniting Church minister and regular visitor at MITA.