Every day for the past five months, Jameela Haidari has been coming to this park at Melbourne's Lincoln Square.
She loves to join her daughter and the other women from their close-knit Afghan refugee community and watch the children play.
But some days the 62-year-old just sits alone staring at the treetops, thinking of the children she had to leave behind.
"Whenever I come to the park I imagine that my son is sitting on the branches of the trees. I cry for him every day when I come here," Ms Haidari told the ABC as she sat on a park bench with emotion welling in her eyes.
While she misses all her children and often can't sleep over worry for them, she is especially afraid for the wellbeing of her youngest son, who worked as a journalist.
Ms Haidari fled Afghanistan as the Taliban seized control of the country six months ago.
She arrived in Australia in September last year, with her husband and two of her children, but her son and her five married children remain back in Kabul with their families.
Ms Haidari is one of about 2,780 refugees from Afghanistan who have been housed in short-term accommodation during the past six months, many of them in student accommodation units on the south side of the park.
Some of them who fled had worked with the Australian government or military.
Others faced threats due to their religious beliefs or ethnicity.
However, here in Australia, they are on track to become permanent residents. They will have the chance to work, study, learn English and begin a new life.
Many of them already have.
More than 2,000 have found permanent accommodation, and around 200 have already joined the workforce.
But, sometimes, when Ms Haidari looks through the trees, she sees the faces of a different group of young men who have fled war and persecution from countries across the globe.
Their fate is much more uncertain, and that uncertainty has taken an unmeasurable toll.
On the other side of the park
At least 32 refugees and asylum seekers live at the Park Hotel on the other side of Lincoln Square.
While only a park separates them, the gulf between their current lives and their future prospects is vast.
All of these men tried to enter Australia to claim asylum by boat.
They faced harrowing and dangerous journeys with hopes of building a new life in Australia, just like Ms Haidari and her family.
But, under Australian law, anyone who arrives by boat to seek asylum must be detained and there is no limit on how long that detention can last.
Most of these men have been locked up for almost a decade.
While they can watch refugee families enjoy sunshine, games and family picnics in the park, they can't join them.
The doors are locked and guarded, their windows are sealed and, unless they are granted bridging visas, are allowed to immigrate to another country or choose to return home, they will be locked away from the world outside.
Ms Haidari only learned of the plight of this other group of refugees through protests she sometimes saw held at the park and was shocked to hear that some of the men detained there were also from Afghanistan.
As Ms Haidari speaks, a group of protesters can be heard in the distance lobbying for the release of the men.
"I was only in isolation for 15 days and that was extremely difficult for me. I don't know how they have coped all these years."
'I can't cross this small window'
Currently, 53 people from Afghanistan are being held in immigration detention, according to the latest figures from the Department of Home Affairs.
The majority are held in offshore detention, with 27 in Papa New Guinea and eight in Nauru.
Others, like Wajahad, were transferred from offshore detention to the Park Hotel for medical treatment and have remained there ever since.
Like many families in the park below, Wajahad, now 34, fled the Taliban with his family.
That was in 1998 — the first time the Taliban were in power — and he was just 10 years old.
They lived in Pakistan for many years but, he said, after his father was shot by the Taliban and his brother went missing, he fled to Australia in 2013.
Facing a dangerous boat journey, he left his infant son and pregnant wife in Pakistan with a plan to bring them over as soon as he could.
Nine years later, he has missed what he called "the expensive years" of seeing his two children grow up.
He has never met his eight-year-old son.
"This is not a life — to wake, eat and just walk around on the third floor," Wajahad told the ABC.
"We're tired of watching the TV, tired of sleeping, tired of talking, [too] tired to complain because it doesn't make any difference. Many of us, we gave up."
He said he was told there was only one way out of indefinite detention: "To go back to Afghanistan".
Yearning for a chance to play with his own children, it can be difficult for Wajahad to watch the Afghan families in the park below.
"I can see everything from my window, but I'm not part of them," he said.
'The boats are still coming'
Lawyer Alison Battisson said those locked away in the Park Hotel were in a state of "absolute limbo", ongoing victims of a failed deterrence policy.
It is not against the law to seek asylum in Australia by boat, but this mandatory detention policy was introduced in an attempt to deter people from trying, something Ms Battisson said was not only a violation of international human rights, but it also didn't work.
"It's just the Australian government no longer reports on-water activities, and turns the boats back or flies the people back."
Meanwhile, she said Park Hotel detention was costing taxpayers $470,000 per person, per year.
Ms Battisson said the comparisons between the treatment of these two groups at opposite ends of the park "cannot be more stark", even when the only major difference in their asylum claims was their method of arrival.
She spoke of one client from the hotel who assisted the coalition against the Taliban but fled to Australia after his friend was murdered.
"He was integral in fighting the Taliban and stopping the spread of that ideology," she said.
The Department of Home Affairs did not respond to requests for comment but a spokesperson told the ABC last month that the government remained "steadfast" on its border protection policies.
The spokesperson said detention policies for those arriving by boat were designed to deter people smuggling, adding it had been eight years since the last known death at sea on a maritime vessel en route to Australia.
Finding a home — the first step to a new life
The federal government said it would provide at least 15,000 humanitarian visas for Afghan nationals over the next four years.
That is in addition to its initial allocation of 3,000 emergency places in August 2021.
Last month, Minister for Immigration Alex Hawke said the increased commitment was "a significant one" to meet Australia's obligations and address the ongoing humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.
"The war in Afghanistan was Australia's longest, and a humanitarian intake of this size reflects this," Mr Hawke said.
"Our commitment to Afghan refugees will be second only in scale to our humanitarian intake from Syria and Iraq."
While those arriving through the humanitarian program are eligible for permanent protection visas, Cath Scarth, the chief executive of Adult Multicultural Education Services (AMES) — which assists refugees to establish new lives here — said these families still faced many challenges.
"Almost within hours, they were yanked from their homes, good jobs, families and lives in Afghanistan, kind of landing in Australia, into hotel quarantine with really very little understanding of what was going to happen and having to start their lives again," she told the ABC.
She said many had arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs after a traumatic escape from Afghanistan, fearing for the safety of those loved ones they left behind.
Right now, the immediate challenge is finding permanent accommodation, without which "it is hard to start anything else".
Ms Scarth urged anyone with rental properties to consider refugee families.
"Being in your own home and being able to start to settle down is one of the first things that people really need," Ms Scarth said.
Back at Lincoln Square, Wahidullah, 42, said he couldn't wait to start his new life.
He urged the Australian government to allow more refugees — who face danger, hunger and hardship — to settle here.
"I think Afghan people will be very supportive to this new community, because they are skilful, and they are educated people," Wahidullah said, adding that special consideration should be given to those with family members already here.
"It is very difficult for someone to be alone here, and their family is left in Afghanistan, so I kindly request to the government of Australia to facilitate this type of visa."
From the window of the Park Hotel above, Wajahad had another wish: freedom.
