Inside the risky route 10 Chinese refugees took to arrive in WA

Insiders have revealed how people smugglers are breaking into Australia through a tiny peninsula in remote WA after a second boat of refugees landed there in just five months.

A remote peninsula in outback WA is becoming a hotspot for people smugglers to dump refugees — as they are becoming increasingly savvy using camouflaged boats and timed runs to dodge border force.

The Daily Telegraph spoke to sources with intimate knowledge of the Truscott Airbase off the Anjo Peninsula in remote WA who have lifted the lid on how the latest boat full of 10 Chinese refugees arrived on Australian shores.

It marks the second such incident at the narrow air base which is surrounded by wilderness after a boat of 15 mostly Bangladeshi refugees arrived in November.

Anjo Peninsula in the far North Kimberley Region in Western Australia where refugees have arrived by boat. P: Google

The Telegraph can reveal the Chinese refugees claimed they came to Australia via Thailand before going to Indonesia to meet with people smugglers who put them in a fishing boat.

Its understood the group of all “military aged males” landed at Vansittart Bay before walking up the track to the air base.

The group, who spoke broken English, then dispersed “in every direction known to man” but refused to tell locals why they were trying to escape China.

Vansittart Bay, Western Australia is where the group first landed.

“They were very tight-lipped about that,” they said.

Sources on the ground are concerned the air base is at risk of becoming a people smuggling hotspot after Bangaledshi refugees revealed they paid $8,000USD to be smuggled there last November.

There has been a major uptick in illegal fishing boats in the region and insiders claim people smugglers are increasingly targeting poor fishermen to do their dirty work.

“They’ve worked out how they can get in. They would come in big boats but now their modus operandi is to sit outside territorial waters and then hammer in around 4pm when all surveillance bases are heading back to Broome or Darwin,” a source said.

The fishing boats used to be a bright blue colour but are now camouflaging according to on the ground sources. Picture: AFMA

“They’ve started painting their boats green and black to hide in the mangroves

They used to be bright Asian colours.

“The thing that worries us from a humanitarian point of view is that if they get to Truscott, we find them, they get medical treatment and get sent to Nauru (but) 150km in either direction there is no one there, no civilisation.”

The group of 15 refugees are believed to have come from China.

Concerns are rife for the dry season, across August and September, when there is no water in the region already devoid of civilisation.

“How many have been dropped off that have died?”

The insider said an embarrassed Labor government had flown in surveillance drones and a flurry of army trucks and ADF personelle at the air base.

The Australian Border Force does not confirm or comment on operational matters.

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