We may be unable to mark the end of WWII with traditional commemorations and gatherings this year, but there are still many ways to connect with and honour our veterans from home.
The Veterans Branch of the Department of Premier & Cabinet has created a dedicated website to allow Victorians to learn more about our veterans, read and hear stories from the home front, the impact the war had on Victoria and to highlight important sites that were used during the war: www.vic.gov.au/75th-anniversary-end-world-war-two-wwii.
As part of this initiative, 18 sites that show the impact of WWII on Victoria have been identified and included on a dedicated webpage that was launched on Saturday, 15 August 2020: www.wwiiathome.com.au. Here you will be able to watch interviews, multimedia and virtual reality tours.
Two of our Greater Shepparton war-related sites feature amongst the 18: Camp 1 at Tatura and the Calder Woodburn Memorial Avenue.
Camp 1 Internment Camp, Tatura
Australian authorities feared that foreign nationals of countries at war with Australia—largely Germany, Italy, and Japan—might become saboteurs or spies. As a result, thousands of Australian residents suddenly found themselves identified as “enemy aliens” and potential threats to Australia's national security. Camp 1 at Tatura is the first of a number of purpose-built camps that were established throughout Australia to house “enemy aliens” and/or prisoners of war during World War II.
The western Goulburn Valley saw the establishment of the largest group of Internment and Prisoner of War camps in Australia. Camp 1 became the nucleus of a localised group of seven such camps located at Tatura, Dhurringile, Rushworth, Murchison, and Graytown. These camps housed the majority of internees and POWs held in Victoria, and the greatest concentration of internees and POWs in Australia.
The lives of internees and prisoners of war are commemorated in two foreign war cemeteries established in Victoria following the end of World War II in close proximity to the camps: the German War Cemetery at Tatura and the Italian Ossario at Murchison cemetery. The German War Cemetery, officially inaugurated in 1958, contains the exhumed and reinterred remains of 272 German internees and POWs from across Australia who died while detained during World Wars I and II. Similarly, the Ossario, which opened in 1961, provided for the reburial of 130 World War II Italian internees and POWs (129 men and 1 woman). Both sites continue to be important places of remembrance for descendants and others.
Today, the former Camp 1 at Dhurringile is privately owned and, at the time of writing, there is no access available, however more information on the history and the experience of those interned can be explored by visiting the Tatura Irrigation and Wartime Camps Museum.
Calder Woodburn Memorial Avenue
The Calder Woodburn Memorial Avenue on the Goulburn Valley Highway south of Shepparton differs from many other memorial plantings as it was the response of a single person–—grieving father, James Louis Fenton (Fen) Woodburn—who lost his son Calder, who was serving abroad with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in World War II.
Woodburn began planting in 1945 and by August 1947 had planted 1,406 trees to complete his original vision. From 1946 to 1949, Woodburn continued to make further plantings, and once complete, the avenue included a total of 2,457 trees stretching 20kms from the Seven Creeks to the Murchison-Violet Town Road
The Calder Woodburn Memorial Avenue is one of the longest Avenues of Honour in Victoria, and the only planting to be completed by one person. It is also significant for its use of native eucalypts. In contrast, most World War I memorial plantings almost exclusively used exotic species.
Greater Shepparton has a second extant avenue of honour, in the grounds of the Merrigum primary school. Planted on the Centenary of Anzac, 25 April 2015, this is a replacement of the original 1918 avenue.
Another avenue of honour was planted in 1917 along either side of the Midland Highway west from Echuca Road at Mooroopna. The avenue honoured Mooroopna’s servicemen and women, and consisted of 132 plane trees. This honour avenue appears to have had a short and chequered existence with numerous subsequent replanting initiatives replacing failed plantings, and the avenue disappeared by the 1960s.
“This initiative of the Department of Premier and Cabinet is an important record of the impact that one of the worst conflicts in history had on Victoria and the contribution that Greater Shepparton made to the war effort,” Council Mayor Cr Seema Abdullah said.
“The internment camps, of which two are located in Greater Shepparton, continue to serve as a powerful example of how everyday citizens can be implicated in the pursuit of robust national security during wartime.
“The Calder Woodburn Memorial Avenue is an extraordinary symbol on our landscape of the grief that can drive a person to ensure that those who lost their lives in the line of service are remembered. Memorials are very important reminders of the loss that our region suffered during international conflicts.”
For more information visit: wwiiathome.com.au
