Hay Internment and POW camps

The Hay Internment and POW camps at Hay, New South Wales, Australia were established during World War II as prisoner-of-war and internment centres, due in part to the isolated location of the town. Three high-security camps were constructed in 1940. The first arrivals were 2,542 internees from Nazi Germany and Austria, most of whom were Jewish; they had been interned in the United Kingdom as enemy aliens when the possibility of an Axis invasion of Britain was at its highest. These internees were transported to Australia on board the British passenger ship HMT Dunera. The internees were kept in poor conditions on Dunera, which prompted a public outcry after news of their conditions became public. The internees arrived at Hay on 7 September 1940 by four trains from Sydney. They 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. After the Dunera internees departed, Italian prisoners of war were placed in Camps 7 and 8. In December 1941, Japanese internees (some from Broome and from isl

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