Boat woman marks 99th birthday in detention centre

Unlike most boat people, the family did not pay a "people smuggler".

They were four generations of one family, ranging in age from 98 to a few weeks, united by the desire for sanctuary and a better life. So they pooled their resources, bought a boat and undertook the perilous voyage to Australia.

The extended clan of more than 120 Burmese Rohingya - led by Australia's oldest "boat person", Ali Nesha - docked at Christmas Island in May last year, but their extraordinary story has only just come to light.

Ali Nesha, the family's matriarch, celebrated her 99th birthday with staff and inmates in a Brisbane detention centre last year, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

This December, all being well, she will turn 100. But as yet, neither she nor any of her children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren has been granted a visa.

Processed by the UNHCR in Kuala Lumpur, they were all granted refugee status. Two years ago, some were offered the chance to resettle in the United States.

But because Ali Nesha was not included, they declined, determined to stay together.

"My brother said, '[If] my grandmother [isn't] going, my family [is] not going to America'," one of Ali Nesha's granddaughters, Tara Begum, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Last year, the family resolved to take their fate into their own hands. Clubbing together, they acquired a boat - and, armed only with a map, their UNHCR passports and the clothes they wore - set off for Australia or New Zealand.

Unlike most boat people, they did not pay a "people smuggler". They had no trained crew and no GPS equipment.

On board was every member of the family, except for a son-in-law of Ali Nesha's, who is asthmatic and feared he might not survive the journey, two of his daughters and their husbands, who stayed in Malaysia.

The old lady coped well with the 10 days at sea, mostly sleeping.

"She is very special," said Tara Begum, adding that everyone else was seasick and frightened.

Now in community detention in Melbourne, Ali Nesha hopes that some of her Brisbane friends will visit her on her 100th birthday.