The passing of time is a strange thing. We flew from Darwin to Dili, capital of East Timor and then drove for four hours to the tiny, dusty border town of Balibo and, almost 34 years to the day since five Australians were murdered there, it was as if nothing had changed.

I think this is possibly the most difficult and most frustrating story I've had to chase all year. For the past 8 days, I've been in Indonesia tracking down people smugglers and the refugees waiting to get on boats to Australia.