Under blue skies and verdant trees, an assembly of Australia's literary community gathers at Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens for the revelation of the country's richest literary prize.

It's a happy crowd, cool drinks on hand for the January event.

When refugee Behrouz Boochani is announced as the winner of the $100,000 Victorian Premier's Prize for Literature for his memoir No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, the gathering erupts with cheers, tears and a chant of "freedom".

The cover of No Friend But the Mountains. ( Supplied )

But there is one person missing from the celebrations. About 4,000 kilometres north, on remote Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, Boochani is walking in the jungle when he gets the news.

"I wish I could be there, it's a great moment," he tells the crowd via phone link. Then the scratchy line cuts out.

In a speech pre-recorded by Australian Story, Boochani declares his win a victory for humanity. His voice is impassioned but flat, his cheek bones as prominent as his collar bones.

"I truly believe words are more powerful than the fences of this place," he says.

"These words are from a person who has been held captive on this island for six years."

As the arts crowd leaves the gardens and goes home for the evening, Boochani returns to his compound and is locked down for the night. In all, he has spent nearly four-and-a-half years in detention and the remaining 16 months under nightly curfew.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 1 minute 10 seconds 1 m 10 s Behrouz Boochani received special exemption to enter the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature. (Supplied: Hoda Afshar)

A 'cry of resistance' message by message

Behrouz Boochani, 35, has become one of Australia's most feted authors and journalists, from his self-described "exile" on Manus Island.

The academic and journalist wrote his 374-page tome in secret, sending it via text message from detention to his translator and editor in Australia.

"I didn't feel safe to write it on paper," Boochani tells Australian Story.

"Anytime, it was possible that I could lose it. When I send it out, it's more safe."

On a smuggled phone, undercover, he would write, send; write, send; write, send.

Receiving the messages in Australia was University of Sydney lecturer Dr Omid Tofighian, who translated the messages from Farsi.

"He hid the phone in a cavity that he created in his mattress," Dr Tofighian says.

"Behrouz had to write the book in conditions of very high security, a lot of surveillance and always with the fear of losing his phone at any time."

Behrouz Boochani (left) sent the text of his book message by message to a Sydney academic. ( Australian Story )

The prize-winning book is a unique blend of the poetic and powerful. The judges described it as a lyrical firsthand account of incarceration and a "cry of resistance".

Man Booker Prize-winner Richard Flanagan says Boochani exhibits extraordinary tenacity and courage to document his experiences.

"Words matter and the truth matters," he says.

"There is an enormous power and a great hope in both of those things."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 58 seconds 58 s Behrouz Boochani wrote the book in Farsi language and his words were translated to English in Australia.

Kurdish 'always under watch'

Boochani says he grew up as a "child of war" in Kurdish Iran, in the shadow of the Iran-Iraq war.

His parents were illiterate farmers near the mountainside city of Ilam.

Boochani made it to university in Tehran and as a young adult became an academic and a journalist.

He was passionate about Kurdish rights and he and some friends opened a news outlet, Werya, to advocate and inform the Kurdish community.

"The Kurdish people always they are under watch, under pressure," Boochani says.

"We knew already that it was going to be very dangerous for us."

In 2013 the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards raided the Werya office in Ilam while Boochani was in Tehran. Eleven of his colleagues were arrested.

"I was hiding myself in a house of a friend in Tehran for two months and then I left Iran — I had to," he says.

He flew to South-East Asia before ending up on a people smuggler's boat bound for Australia.

'I was drowning'

On July 19, 2013, then-prime minster Kevin Rudd issued a formal address to the nation.

By this time it was estimated nearly 1,000 asylum seekers had already died at sea attempting to reach Australia.

"From this point forward all asylum seekers who arrive by boat will be sent to Papua New Guinea," Mr Rudd said.

"The rules have changed. If you come by boat, you will never permanently live in Australia.

"Australians have had enough of seeing asylum seekers dying in the waters to our north and our north-west."

As Mr Rudd delivered the changes in relation to international asylum-seeker processing, Boochani was on an Indonesian boat, bobbing up and down, lost on the vast Indian Ocean.

It was his second attempt at the perilous 400-kilometre ocean journey from Indonesia to Christmas Island, having paid a people smuggler $5,000.

The first ended in tragedy.

As soon as the group of asylum seekers started their journey, the boat started taking on water.

By the time they were rescued, one of his fellow travellers had drowned.

"I myself was drowning in the ocean," he says.

"For a second, I opened my eyes, I was under the ocean. Still I cannot imagine how I could survive."

Boochani returned to Indonesia and spent a night in prison, but escaped.

He was committed to getting back on a boat.

"Where could I go? Already I paid him, so he had to do his duty, which was [to] help me to getting about and leave Indonesia," he says.

So when Mr Rudd was advising, "If you come by boat, you will never permanently live in Australia", Boochani and the others onboard had no idea. They were already on the ocean.

They were picked up by a British ship, then transferred to the custody of the Royal Australian Navy, and taken to the Australian territory of Christmas Island.

It was July 23, 2013 — four days after Mr Rudd's announcement.

Tensions were high at Manus Island as police stormed the facility in 2017, forcing a move to alternative accommodation. ( AAP Image/Supplied by Refugee images )

The power of words

The men are waiting. Often waiting for food, always waiting for information.

In the nearly six years they have spent on the island, there have been riots, deaths, self-harm and suicides. Some men have integrated in PNG, 40 babies have been born.

The 2014 murder of fellow Kurdish-Iranian Reza Berati by two PNG men connected to the detention centre propelled Boochani to tell the stories of the detainees.

Reza Barati. ( Supplied )

Australian journalists were not allowed to visit offshore processing and detention facilities, and Boochani was determined to let the world know what was occurring. He became a source, then a correspondent for The Guardian Australia.

Assistant news editor Gabrielle Jackson says Boochani gave his first-person view of the "perpetual limbo".

"He wrote memorials for his friends who had died," she says.

"Behrouz's words have really turned the world's attention to Australia and to Australia's policies."

Boochani also began secretly filming vision of the detention centre on his phone, which was made into a film, Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time. The film was co-directed by Boochani and Netherlands-based director, Arash Kamali Sarvestani.

In 2016 the PNG Supreme Court deemed Australia's detention centre illegal.

It was shut down in 2017 and the men were moved to refugee transit centres near the island's main town of Lorengau.

They are now free to leave the facilities during the day but are locked up in the compounds at night. Boochani spends his days walking in the jungle, smoking and writing.

Translator Omid Tofighian (left) translated and edited Boochani's award-winning book, No Friend But The Mountains. ( Australian Story )

As the men waited and international agreements were thrashed out between Australia and the US, a group of Australians had already come together to amplify Boochani's message to the world.

Poet Janet Galbraith started receiving short stories and poetry from Boochani in 2014 as part of her Writing Though Fences initiative.

"They were very affecting and strong and I was amazed when I first started reading his work," she says.

Publisher Geordie Williamson commissioned the book after reading Boochani's accounts.

He says the memoir is unprecedented in its combination of Farsi poetry, outrage and editorial.

"All of these things get thrown into the blend of his experience and the result is something I've not encountered before," he says.

Coming to Australia 'a mistake'

First look: Behrouz Boochani was photographed by Hoda Ashfar in a series of poignant portraits. ( Supplier: Hoda Ashfar )

Amid the fanfare in Australian literary circles, daily life for Boochani is unchanged on Manus Island.

He has had a preliminary interview with US officials in Port Moresby that could lead to an offer of resettlement in the US.

Loading

In 2013, the Rudd government arranged a deal with Papua New Guinea that guaranteed resettling for bona fide refugees on the PNG mainland to prevent "permanent incarceration".

At this stage, Boochani says he will not be following through with resettlement in Papua New Guinea.

Boochani now regrets his decision to attempt to come to Australia.

"I made a mistake so how long should I be in this place because of my mistake," he says.

"You have kept me on this island for years. Let me go."

Australian Story approached Prime Minister Scott Morrison, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Immigration Minister David Coleman for comment. All declined.

Mr Rudd says he has called for those being kept indefinitely on Manus and Nauru, including Boochani, to be allowed to settle in New Zealand, other third countries, or Australia.

Watch Australian Story's The Invisible Man on ABC iview or Youtube.

Feature writer: Rosanne Barrett