There are no signs to guide you to Australia's detention centre on Nauru. You instead have to follow the signs that lead to the island's ''rubbish dump'' and eventually they take you straight to the detention centre's entrance. That alone explains a lot about how Australia is dealing with these refugees who, tragically, include women and children.

When you enter the secure compound, the first thing you notice is the stifling heat that hangs heavy over the camp. The tents have no air-conditioning, fans are in brutally short supply, the humidity is unbelievable and shade is sparse. The second thing you notice is the desperation in the eyes of the people who are being held there.

There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that it is inhumane for adults to be held in the Nauru camp's conditions, but the fact that children are being held there is truly unacceptable. There is no playground in the compound, there aren't any toys, and all the children have to play in is the bright white gravel that blankets the entire camp. Those white stones are there because the detention centre is right in the middle of a quarry that was once a central part of the island's ailing phosphate mine.

There are 765 people locked in the Nauru detention centre right now. The camp is divided into different sections with single adult men held in one area and families, including mothers, babies and unaccompanied children, on the other side of the centre. It is the family compound where the desperation is at its most heart-wrenchingly intense and it is the pregnant women who are the most afraid of what the future will hold.

Every refugee I spoke to referred to the camp as a ''jail'' and many wanted to know what they had done to warrant their imprisonment. A widowed father of two told me, as his eyes filled with tears, ''My children ask me every day, when are we getting out of this prison? Every day I lie to them, but now I have no lies left.''