Tatura Camp 2B
3rd September 1940 - 16th May 1941
​
The Dunera Italians lived at Tatura Camp 2B for eight and a half months. Camp 2 consisted of
two camps each with a capacity to accommodate 500. Vittorio Tolaini's sketch illustrates the seven dormitory huts used by the Italians. Each dormitory housed 28 in a double decker bunk arrangement. Bowling greens were set down as was a jumping ground. Sport played an important role in the health and well being of the internees.
Tatura Camp 2B
(from the collection of Vittorio Tolaini IWM)
Tatura Camp 4B
16th May 1941 - 9th December 1941
​
With the developments in war, the landscape of internment and prisoner of war camps became changeable. To accommodate 2000 Italian prisoners of war from Egypt, Camps 7 and 8 at Hay NSW were vacated by the 2000+ Dunera German and Austrian refugees who then arrived at Tatura Camps. In the re-allocations, the Dunera Italians vacated Tatura Camp 2B and decamped to Tatura Camp 4B.
​
Camp 4 consisted of four compounds and was built as a family camp.
Each dormitory was divided into 12 compartments, which accommodated two people each. Eli Rosenbluth, a Dunera German refugee, sketched the details of a compartment which had one window and a door with direct access to outside. After living and sleeping communally in transit internment camps in the UK, cramped spaces on ships and dormitory accommodation in Camp 2B, Camp 4B offered the Italians privacy in their living arrangements. It had been over 11 months since they departed their homes.
​
Tatura Camp 4D
(from the collection of Eli Rosenbluth State Library of NSW)
Loveday Camps 9 and 10
Loveday Camp 10
(AWM Image 064905)
10th December 1941 - 9th September 1942
​
On 9th December 1941, 185 UK Italian internees departed Tatura Camp 4B, arriving at Loveday Camp 9B in South Australian on 10th December 1941 at 16.15 hrs. The UK Italians were then moved from Loveday Camp 9B to Loveday Camp 10 on 13th December 1941.
​
Loveday Camps 9 and 10 were set out in a rectangular pattern with each camp containing 39 buildings, a hospital and each camp was built to accommodate 1000.
​
When the Italian internees arrived at Loveday Camp 10 the only buildings were the core facilities eg kitchen, mess, ablutions, laundry, canteen, recreation hall, detention cells. The men bedded down in tents with the task of the residents to build the huts for dormitories. The tents had a wooden floor which raised them above the ground.
​
Most resident internees were German though Vittorio Tolaini remembered that the camp took on an international flavour with the arrival of ‘white Russians’ and members of the French Foreign Legion who only stayed for a short period. The first meals were cooked by the Germans and were not too appealing but in time the Italian chefs took over the cooking in one of the two
kitchens.
​
Tatura Camp 2A
10th September 1942 -
Nine months after their arrival in South Australia, the Italian UK Internees departed Loveday on 9th September 1942. The next day, 10th September 1942, the group returned to Tatura Camp 2 but this time to 2A and were then sharing the camp with a small group of German internees and mixed nationalities.
​
By August 1944, Camp 2 had been divided into three camps: Camp 2A housed Italians and Germans, Camp 2B accommodated families from the Solomn Islands with German, Austrian, Russian and Polish internees in Camp 2C.
​
Tatura Camp 2A
( ICRC Archives Image V-P-HIST-10187 6-04B)
Loveday Camp 14D
Loveday Camp 14
(Internment in South Australia: history of Loveday internment group, Barmera, 1940-1946 State Library South Australia)
8th March 1944 - 31st January 1945
On 7th March 1944 a group of 40 UK internees departed Tatura Camp 2 for Loveday Camp 14D. In this group were 28 Italian and 12 German UK internees. The departed group arrived at Loveday Camp 14D on 8th March 1944.
​
Loveday Camp 14 complex consisted of four compounds each accommodating 1000 internees, set out in a hexagonal pattern. The size of the camp complex in itself was daunting compared with Camp 10 Loveday and Camps 2 and 4 Tatura.
​
The Italians were released at different times and returned to Tatura Camp 2A. The last two men departed Loveday Camp 14D on the 31st January 1945 and arrived at Tatura Camp 2A on the 1st February 1945.
​