Transcript
Klaus Nannested
Welcome to Talking Water with GMW where we discuss all things water.
This month, we are join by George Ferguson from the Tatura Irrigation and Wartime Camps Museum.
Many of the lakes, dams and reservoirs we manage have been around for generations. They have helped transform the region and have seen the region transform around them.
Waranga Basin was completed over a century ago and has a rich history. Ahead of Anzac Day, we wanted to focus on a unique part of its history and discuss the internment camps established around the Basin during the second world war.
To do so, we are joined by George Ferguson from the Tatura Irrigation and Wartime Camps Museum. George provides insight into what life in these camps was like, who they housed, and what remains of them today.
We have episodes on a range of topics on our website, so be sure to check them out after this one.
Klaus Nannestad
Thanks very much, George, I really appreciate your time with this. Can you tell me a bit about how you became interested in these internment camps?
George Ferguson
It's rather interesting because I, like 90% of the people are in Tatura, who have never visited the Tatura Museum and they don't sort of realise the history that's out there. And about 10 years ago, I went to the museum and I saw the exhibit as it was then and was very impressed and haven't missed a beat since. I've become quite engrossed in the whole saga of how the internees kept out there, and it's such a life changing thing for all them.
Klaus Nannestad
Yeah, and obviously at GMW our main office is here in Tatura and it is such a big part of Tatura's history as well, isn't it?
George Ferguson
Oh, very much so, yes. Well when war broke out, of course, the camps were instigated then and started then. So from then in 1939, that was when the first camps were started out there.
Klaus Nannestad
So you said the camps were established in 1939. So who were they established to house back then?
George Ferguson
Well, when war broke out in 1939, we being part of the Commonwealth, we were enemies to Germany.
So all Germans in Australia at that time had been tabulated. Actually, they were sort of forecasting that the war was going to happen and all the Germans had been tabulated A, B or C, and the day war broke out in September 1939, all A-class Germans were immediately arrested and unfortunately we didn't have any way to keep them.
So first off, they commandeered the Dhurringile Mansion, which is just down Murchison Road there, and it was vacant at the time. So that was the first official camp.
They were all Germans because there was a lot of Germans in Australia - men with German passports. So they were all rounded up and they ,well, they kept them down in Melbourne at Wurth's circus actually on the Yarra River down there.
And then I brought them all up to Dhurringile mansion, and they kept them there for about a year till they had Camp One built, which is sort of midway between the Dhurringile Mansion and the Basin. Camp One was the first one in Australia of they ended up with about 18 internment camps.
Klaus Nannestad
So you mentioned that they were all class-A, do you know sort of how they were classified?
George Ferguson
Yes, well, if you were a German and you belonged to the German club in Melbourne or the head branches everywhere, that was a big tick against you. And there's a lot of wool brokers and motor mechanics of German companies who were in Australia at the time and they were class A as well.
So they got interned. Wool buyers were particularly vulnerable because they visited the wool sheds all across Australia and so they knew all the country and all the ins and outs of the country, so they were viewed with great suspicion. So they were all interned and those at Camp One, they were of age group from probably 16 up to 60, all men, in Camp One.
Klaus Nannestad
Yeah. And so I think you said the end up being 18 camps was it?
George Ferguson
Throughout Australia, yes. One, two, three and four were around Waranga Basin and they built them around the basin because there was about 18,000 people involved altogether there, and so you can imagine they needed a lot of water, and they did grow a lot of vegetables later on and of course water was an essential part of life there.
So, Waranga Basin being a permanent water supply was very attractive to the camp situation.
Klaus Nannestad
Were those four camps near Waranga, unique to the other 14 camps in any particular way?
George Ferguson
Yes, they're all very similar. The security was quite high. They had double barbed wire fences around them with entanglements in between, and watchtowers, they had searchlights on all night, so it was high security.
And Camp One was sort of a bit of a trial. It was built square and it had about six watchtowers there, which later on the camps became very diamond shaped and with one watchtower on each corner. So they were a bit more efficient, but their security was quite high.
Klaus Nannestad
And so where would these camps be today with the current geography?
George Ferguson
Camp One, as I said, was midway between Dhurringile Mansion and the basin, which on Crawford Road, actually. And Camp Two is just about three km north of that. And Camp Three and Four were over on the other side of the basin, on the western side, as you go round past the wall, you see a Zigland Road, and it is down that road, about five kms down there.
They selected hilly terrain because with the all weather conditions they had to accommodate good drainage. So they picked the spots where there was good slopes and not too much flat country to pond water. Yeah, and so that was obviously a consideration for their location. And then the other one was the water supply of the basins that the other big reason that they moved in that here, one of the other reasons we're told was their distance from Melbourne, 160 kms.
It was more than walking distance and we had good rail connections. So they moved the internees around by rail and there was a lot of movement through at these camps right over to Western Australia and some in South Australia and a lot up in the riverine area. Camps Seven, Eight and Nine were all up in the Riverine area and they seemed to move them around in between the camps.
They tried to segregate the Nazis from the Jews because obviously that was the cause of the Second World War. And then they brought families into it too from Palestine and they were kept separate again. So there was a lot of moving around and men were always applying to have their sentence, so to speak, so they could get out because a lot of them were arrested on pretty shaky grounds, but they had to go before a court and prove that they were anti Nazis or they didn't want to join the German regime. And so these courts were going all the time. So they brought them down from Brisbane and Sydney and they had these courts, some of them were in Tatura.
I don't know what the logical reasons were, but they seemed to be going all the time, moving around, trying to do the right thing by the Red Cross and the government. They were very astute of the human element in the prisons. I call them prisons, but they were good conditions, but they were locked up behind barbed wire. So they felt that they were being imprisoned.
Klaus Nannestad
Yeah, well, that's what I was going to ask. It sounds like it was very high security. What would daily life have looked like in there for the inmates, if you call them that?
George Ferguson
Well, there's every sort across rural, modern society. There was cooks and teachers and professors of music and a whole gamut of people in the camp.
And they had a symphony orchestra, even had a grand piano at there. They had quite sophisticated concerts. And they even, in Camp 13, they had a theatre and they had quite a large theatrical productions, one they took down to Melbourne, to Melbourne University and staged down there at the end of the war. Yeah, so it was a great cross gamut of society.
Klaus Nannestad
That's amazing. And so while it might have looked a bit like what we picture when we think of prisoner of war camps from the outside, it might have had a few more freedoms than the typical ones on the inside?
George Ferguson
Yes, we sort of when we think of prisoners of war, we think of the German debacle.
But all the internee's relatives and our internees earlier that came back to Tatura, always commented that they were well looked after. And we've got a video actually its called, 'They treated us with respect' and this came out all the time in the interviews with the ex internees. They really felt well respected, apart from that they were locked up. They had barbed wire fever.
In Camp Three, it was a family camp. The kids there, they loved it. They thought it was marvelous. They used to crawl under the barbed wire but the kids were well looked after. They had a school there. In fact, the schooling went right up to matriculation standard and university level. In Camp Three, which was one that the other side of the basin, they were families from Palestine and with us being a British protectorate and when war broke out, these Germans who were in community farms there, they'd been there since before the First World War, and they knew that if they didn't proactively live life and get on with life, that they would just deteriorate. So they had schools and education facilities that if not individuals started really, they had formal classes every day in their parts. And yeah, and as I said, there was a cross gamut of professors and everything they who were able to teach them. So they made the most of those situations.
Klaus Nannestad
Yeah, that's incredible, isn't it? And was it sort of after when peace was announced that the camps closed down?
George Ferguson
Yes, it took till 1947 for the final men to get released, to go back to their home countries and the war finished in 1945. Of course, they had to get ships, first of all, to take them back because all the ships had been engulfed in taking men away from Australia. For instance, Japan sent a ship to pick up some Japanese internees and it was such a horror ship that the government banned it from taking off because the conditions were so bad. They sent another ship to pick up. The Japanese camp was a camp of over a thousand Japanese internees and there was over 100 babies born there. But for the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war had to be reinstated to their home country, so they had to wait till they could get a ship to take them back to either Germany or Japan.
But of course, the Germans wouldn't believe that Germany was in such a mess. They thought it was all propaganda. And the Red Cross had movies of their home country, but they still believed it was propaganda and that they were going back to their favorite homeland.
But a lot of them came back again because they were so disillusioned as when they got home and found it was just a bombed out mess and food was very short, which was a big problem. But out here, food was one of the things they always commented on. They had ample good food, so they were happy to live here.
Klaus Nannestad
That's all really fascinating George. Is there anything we haven't covered that you think would be of interest about these internment camps?
George Ferguson
Well, the camps that are around the basin, of course, it was 80 years since they were used, but Camp One has still sort of got good relics There. When the war finished, in 47, the government sold everything up and anything the move was taken away and sold off because building supplies were very short. After the war, everything was very valuable.
But all the concrete foundations are still out there and that person who's bought Camp One is very desiring of retaining anything that's there and maintaining it. And there's so many stories out there. I mean, if you know that that hollow there was where the secret radio was and they had a bowling alley and tennis courts and everything like this.
So you can see them and anyone that knows the history can explain it to you. And this guy that owns it now, he has joined with the Tatura Museum and we can take to that there every three months to have a look and explain how they actually all worked, which is excellent.
Klaus Nannestad
That's fantastic. And I imagine if people do want to find out more than museum is the perfect place for it, isn't it?
George Ferguson
Yeah, well, three quarters of our exhibitions now is to do with the camps and the history of the internment. So it's a big area.
Klaus Nannestad
Thanks so much, George. And also with the Tatura museum, there's also a lot of irrigation history, which is obviously a big part of our history at GMW, so it's definitely worth checking out.
George Ferguson
That's right. Yes. We've got a good lot of records because when State Rivers and Water Supply Commission closed we gathered all the old records from there. So we've got lots of other ledgers and things and it's very handy because people ask histories of farms and you can track a lot of people through tying their water rights. And we've got one of the old first water wheels standing there, the old wooden ones. Its quite interesting.
Klaus Nannestad
It's great to have all that information preserved. Thanks very much, George.
George Ferguson
Oh, my pleasure.