The Sabian Mandaean Association in Australia is the community body for Mandaeans in the Liverpool area of south western Sydney, and it administers the local place of worship. Mandaeism is an ancient Gnostic religion that reveres John the Baptist and centres its ritual life on running water, so a mandi is built beside a pool or watercourse used for the repeated baptism known as masbuta. Most Mandaeans now live outside the historic homelands in southern Iraq and Khuzistan, and associations such as this one are where the ritual calendar and the Mandaic language are kept up.