Hay Internment Camp, New South Wales, Australia

On July 10, 1940, a group of 2, 542 internees left from Liverpool on the HMT Dunera for transport to Australia. All had been declared Illegal Aliens on the outbreak of World War Two. Destination for many was Hay Internment Camp in New South Wales, about 450 miles west of Sydney, pictured here in a watercolour painted by one of the internees at the camp. Arrivals on the Dunera were interned in Camps 7 and 8 (located near the Hay showground) under the guard of the 16th Garrison Battalion of the Australian Army. In November 1940 the other compound at Hay, Camp 6 (near the Hay Hospital), was occupied by Italian civilian internees. Camps 7 and 8 were vacated in May 1941 when the Dunera internees left Hay; some were sent to Orange (NSW), others to Tatura in Victoria, and others to join the Pioneer Corps of the Australian Army. The Dunera Boys are still fondly remembered in Hay; every year the town holds a Dunera Day in which many surviving internees return to the site of their former imprisonment

Aliens Barbed Declared Desolate Dunera Extradition Huts Illegal Internees Internment Outbreak Spade Vegetable Watchtower

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