Histories of Internment in Tatura and Murchison

The townships of Tatura and Murchison, located in the Goulburn Valley, are keys to a scarcely acknowledged chapter in the history of Australia’s home front during the Second World War.  Branded as enemy aliens and a danger to the Australian public, people of Italian, German, and Japanese origin from all over Australia were rounded up and sent to live in internment camps.  Internees often spent several years in these camps, even though many of them were Australian citizens and even more were never proven to have fascist tendencies. Seven out of eighteen of Victoria’s purpose-built internment and POW camps were built in the Tatura-Murchison area.  Internment was at its height in 1942, when the camps in total held around 12000 internees and POWs.This tour will take you on a short drive, pointing out where three of these camps once stood, and where the bodies of German and Italian internees and POWs have been laid to rest.  It is important to note, for both your own safety and to illustrate my argument across this audio-guide, that the ruins of the camps are on private property, so please drive around the perimeter of the site, but don’t go jumping any fences.  To give a sense of what is left of the camps, plenty of photos are included in this audio-guide.