MANTRA:CENTRE OF NATIONAL RESILIENCE

A TALE OF TWO QUARANTINE HOTELS.

The Mantra Hotel at Preston was used to house about 60 refugee men. They were brought to Australia in 2019 from Manus Island and Nauru for urgent medical treatment under the Medevac legislation. However, due to COVID lockdowns in Melbourne, they were kept in this (and later transfered to other Hotels) and kept from leaving until the legislation was repealed in 2021. 

During this period, Australia also pursued the building of a $AU580 million quarantine hub a Mickleham. Since completion in 2022, the centre had housed just 200 international arrivals out of the 180,000 people who had arrived in Victoria over the same period. Now ear-marked as a ‘Centre of National Resilience,’ it has temporarily used by Emergency Recovery Victoria to house flood victims in 2023. Cases of violence and drug dealing was reported before the centre was cleared and remains largely abandoned.