For Ravi, the boredom of immigration detention was too much

RAVI, a 17-year-old Tamil released last week from Christmas Island's detention camp for minors and families, says it is so overcrowded that inmates have to queue for 90 minutes to get their food.

The boy, who did not want his real name used, spent more than six months at the construction camp compound, made up mainly of transportable huts, near the island's swimming pool and rubbish tip.

He had left his home town in Sri Lanka's north, in a border area where the Sri Lankan army fought the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, when he was still 16.

While his parents stayed behind, he flew from Colombo to Singapore, then travelled overland to Malaysia, before taking a boat to Australia and being picked up close to Christmas Island.

Ravi, now living in Sydney, said conditions inside the construction camp had grown steadily worse as the number of asylum-seekers grew.

"It's very crowded there now," he said through a translator. "We queue up for our food and it takes about 1 1/2 hours before we get our food. And the internet hasn't really been working for a month."When we ask to go out, they say they don't have enough officers. When we ask to use the internet, they say the officer in charge is not there."

There are 288 people in the construction camp, which was built with a capacity of 200. It includes a medical area, a gymnasium and recreation areas and houses unaccompanied minors, families and single women.

But for Ravi, it was the sheer boredom and depression that was the hardest to deal with.

He said there was nothing to do, so he and his friends would watch the same five DVDs over and over every night, and then sleep until midday.

"What else is there to do?" he said.

"A lot of people are really worried. They are worried they may get deported so they are all depressed there."

And the 32-day boat trip from Malaysia still haunts him.

He thought they might not make it when the engine broke down.

"I was very scared," he said.

"I just sat there most of the time, but when the boat started flooding, I bailed out the water with everybody else."

He is happy to have been accepted as a refugee in Australia but misses his parents and still feels lost in his new country.

A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship said the asylum-seekers were provided with adequate food and looked after in the best way possible.