On Sunday, on her 36th birthday, Hajar Maghames woke to an unexpected gift — the news that she and her family were being suddenly released from the detention facility they have been locked in for the past year and a half.
Within hours, the former primary school teacher, her brother Abbas and two parents were on a plane leaving Darwin for Brisbane, where they have been told they will live in community detention.
The family of Iranian refugees was the last group brought under the now-repealed medevac laws remaining in detention in Darwin.
On Sunday morning, surrounded by supporters in the Darwin airport departure lounge singing "Happy Birthday", Ms Maghames said the news was still sinking in.
"We very shocked, after nine years suffering," she said.
The family spent seven years detained in Australia's camp on Nauru before being flown to Darwin for medical treatment last February.
Since then, they had been held in a compound beside the Mercure Darwin Airport Resort, which was gazetted as a so-called "alternate place of detention".
The Maghames were the last of more than a dozen people held at the facility, some of whom were transferred elsewhere pending resettlement overseas.
Another refugee pair found conditions in detention in Darwin so unliveable they instead chose to return to Nauru.
The situation sparked protests and support from Darwin community members and refugee advocates, some of whom have held nightly vigils outside the compound fence for the past 200 days.
Advocates from the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN), including Olivia Ellis, joined the family at the airport to say goodbye
"Obviously we would have welcomed them into community detention here [in Darwin], but they have not got that, they've got community detention in Brisbane and we are so, so excited."
The advocates say they do not know why the family is being released into the community now, after more than a year of requests.
The Department of Home Affairs has been contacted for comment.
Hajar Maghames said she does not know what her life will look like in community detention in Brisbane.
She thanked Darwin residents for their support and urged them to keep fighting for people who remain in detention elsewhere in Australia.
"I appreciate all of our friends standing with us, supporting us, until we get free," she said.
"Just don't forget there are others, our friends, stuck in detention, who are still waiting for their freedom. They need their freedom as well."
