SYDNEY -- The boat people are landing. Although still just a trickle, the mostly Chinese illegal immigrants look set to flood through the open door named Australia. Nor is it just human cargo being offloaded on these unprotected shores. Heroin from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia is also being dumped here by the triads of South China.
Just how well-organized this lethal drug trade is -- and how vulnerable this target country is proving -- became clear recently when the latest illegal arrivals, 60 Chinese, were rounded up in lonely bushland only a few hundred kilometers north of Sydney. The scene at Scotts Head, NSW was straight out of a Keystone Kops movie. Beached on the empty sand, typical of much of Australia's 37,000 km of coastline, lay an Indonesian rust-bucket. By the time local farmers noticed it and rang the police, the 60 would-be New Australians had scattered in all directions.
Struggling through heavy rain, dressed in smart business suits, they obviously figured they could find Sydney or Melbourne -- where they had contact addresses -- somewhere "out there." The sight of "Chinese businessmen" staggering out of the semitropical jungle astonished the locals. One family invited three of them to breakfast -- with Chinese tea, of course.