PLEASE SEND US BACK TO LIBERIA

Sisters Princess and Yeah Yeah Gbdeah are very unhappy about their treatment since arriving in Australia:

The sisters told the Herald yesterday that a case worker from the Australian Centre for Languages, a company privately contracted by the Department of Immigration, presented them with a 12-month lease which the two sisters did not want to sign because they were afraid and unfamiliar with the area.

In response, they say, the case worker told them they would not be given any food vouchers.

The only food in the cupboard was a packet of rice and some oil. In the fridge was an apple. They had nothing else to eat for five days.

Another refugee, Caroline Nykango, 30, from Sudan, was with the women and did sign the lease. In return, she was given a $50 voucher but having never been to a supermarket before, she had no idea how to use it.

The women also said they had no toiletries or sanitary products.

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"I felt Africa is better than here because we had no one to talk to - no one to show us anything."

Princess, who had hoped to come to Australia to study nursing, said she was now sad and discouraged. She has been separated from her four-year-old daughter, who remains in Africa, and the rest of her family.

"When we knew we were coming we were so happy, this place we were going to was going to be so nice, so peaceful and when you are there you have no problems - when you are there you have a new life. But now my impression of Australia is very bad … I spend the whole day sleeping."

One apple between two women over five days, it must have felt just like home. Seriously, if these women have suffered so much at home in Liberia, but think it would be better there, off you go. I mean really, they've only been here a week and already it's gimme, gimme, gimme.