The Tamil family detained on Christmas Island while they fight deportation was unaware the Australian territory will be used to quarantine Wuhan evacuees until they were told by a freelance journalist.

Known as the Bileola family after the Queensland town where they had built a life, Priya, Nadesalingam and their children, Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, were sent to Christmas Island in August after the federal court granted an injunction to halt their deportation.

The family are the sole inhabitants of the island’s detention centre, which was controversially re-opened by the Morrison government in March and has so far cost taxpayers $26.8m.

Freelance journalist Rebekah Holt said the family was in the dark about Scott Morrison’s announcement that the island would be used as a quarantine area until she contacted them.

“They hadn’t been informed of any of the government’s plans to use the centre as an evacuation centre for the Wuhan people.

“It was rough, [Priya] burst into tears,” Holt added.

At a press conference on Thursday, the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton said that the area where the family is staying was a “completely separate area” from the isolation zone the government intends to establish.

“People stay within the centre until we get medical clearance for them to come out,” he said.

“My clear message to people on Christmas Island is we won’t be using the medical centre or the health facilities on Christmas Island.

“People who have come from China from this province will be restricted to the isolation area and there is a decision that’s made under the Biosecurity Act to declare that zone.”

But Holt said she has spent her phone call with Priya “trying to reassure her because she was very upset”.

“She was just in shock at the idea that people who are that sick were being bought to the island,” Holt said.

Those concerns compound the difficulties the family is already facing on the island. Both children have experienced health issues while in detention. More recently, Kopika has just started school, but Holt said she has been experiencing an allergic reaction believed to be related to mosquitos.

Holt added Priya has been told she cannot access a Cat scan on the island to assess an injury, which she said she sustained when the family was taken to Christmas Island.

“Priya wanted to know what I knew about how the viruses spread,” Holt said. “And I said, look it’s person-to-person, there’s got to be proximity.

“But she was … really sort of agitated trying to understand about the coronavirus … She said, ‘How is it spread because there’s lots of big flies that come?’ … She had these very, kind of, basic concerns.”

The family are awaiting court dates next month as they fight to avoid deportation to Sri Lanka.

The Home Affairs department was contacted for comment.