Tatura
Victoria
Main street
Tatura is located in City of Greater Shepparton
Tatura
Tatura
Coordinates36°26′0″S 145°14′0″E / 36.43333°S 145.23333°E / -36.43333; 145.23333
Population4,955 (2021 census)[1]
Postcode(s)3616
Elevation114 m (374 ft)
Location
LGA(s)City of Greater Shepparton
State electorate(s)Shepparton
Federal division(s)Nicholls
Mean max temp Mean min temp Annual rainfall
21.3 °C
70 °F		 8.3 °C
47 °F		 474.1 mm
18.7 in

Tatura is a town in the Goulburn Valley region of Victoria, Australia, and is situated within the City of Greater Shepparton local government area, 167 kilometres (104 mi) north of the state capital (Melbourne) and 18 kilometres (11 mi) west of the regional centre of Shepparton. At the 2021 census, Tatura had a population of 4,955.[1]

During World War II, several internment camps were set up around Tatura by the Australian government. Four of these were for "enemy alien" civilians, and three were for prisoners of war. Between 1940 and 1947, there were 10,000 to 13,000 people in the internment camps at different times.

With a large corporate and manufacturing presence within the town, Tatura is a major employer within the Goulburn Valley. Attractions include the Cussen Park wetlands, the Wartime Camps, and Irrigation Museum. The name of the town is an Aboriginal word meaning "small lagoon."

History

The Post Office opened on 1 February 1875.[2] The Tatura Magistrates' Court closed on 1 January 1990.[3]

World War II internment camps

Family held at Tatura Interment Camp 3, in 1943


Several internment camps were set up around Tatura, Rushworth, and Murchison (Dhurringile) by the Australian government during World War II. Four of these were for "enemy alien" civilians, and three were for prisoners of war. Australian law in 1939 designated people "enemy aliens" if they were Germans or were Australians who had been born in Germany; later, it covered Italians and Japanese as well.[4] The majority of the "enemy aliens" were refugees fleeing the Nazis.[5] Between 1940 and 1947, there were 10,000 to 13,000 civilians interned in the camps at different times.[6]

Before the war, Britain was home to around 73,000 Germans, who had left Germany due to the rising tensions and the rise of the Nazi regime in the country. Many of these were also young male Germans who had been in schools in Britain before the outbreak of WWII. In June 1940, France fell to Nazi Germany and Allied soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk.[7] The British government ordered the internment of ‘enemy aliens’ (unnaturalised people born in enemy countries).[7] This included both long-term residents of Britain, as well as recent refugees who were fleeing Nazi oppression, all of whom were regarded as potential spies or Nazi sympathisers.[7]

They were shipped out of the country in the middle of the war, predominantly to Australia (on the HMT Dunera from Britain in September 1940) and Canada.[8][9][10][11]

The camps, in rural Australia, were surrounded by two or three parallel rows of perimeter fences of barbed wire up to 10 feet in height, separated by Dannert wire (razor wire that formed in large coils which can be expanded like a concertina), and by 20-foot-high guard towers, manned by sentries with rifles, Vickers machine guns, or Bren guns, as well as by sentry-manned catwalks, with banks of floodlights 60 to 80 feet high.[12][13][14][8] Soldiers were instructed that familiarity with Internees "should be avoided at all times."[12] Tatura Intgernment Camps 3 and 4 were opened in 1940.[12]

Tatura Internment Camp 1, part of a Tatura complex of seven internment camps, was built by the Commonwealth on land that it acquired compulsorily from a farmer, with construction completed by February 1940.[15][16]

Among the more notable internees, interned by Australia for two years as "enemy aliens" in Tatura Interment Camp 3 starting with their arrival in 1940 as they fled Austria, were Jewish refugee from the Nazis (and artist and inventor) (Polish-Jewish) Slawa Horowitz Duldig, who had invented and patented the modern folding umbrella in 1929, along with her Polish-Jewish refugee sculptor husband Karl Duldig, and their daughter Eva Duldig (from the ages of two to four); Eva two decades later represented Australia at the Wimbledon Championships in tennis.[17][18][19]

Similarly, artist Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack had been forced to leave Germany during the rise to power of the Nazis due to his part-Jewish heritage.[20] However, upon arrival in Australia he was deemed an "enemy alien," and interned in interment camps including Tatura, from 1940 to 1942.[20][21][22] Another person interned as an "enemy alien" at Tatura was composer Felix Werder, son of a Berlin synagogue cantor.[23]

In 1941, German Templers were shipped from the German Templer Colonies in Palestine and interned for the duration of the war.[24] After arriving in Australia on 25 August 1941, the Templers were housed in Camp 3 in Tatura. Using the experience gained during internment in Egypt in World War I, they quickly established a school and a kindergarten, as well and developed work routines to prevent depression. After the war, the majority of Templer families remained in Australia.[25] The Temple Society Australia was established in 1950.[26]

In 1941, Major Julian Layton arrived from England on a mission. Layton, a Jew like many of the Dunera internees, managed to secure the release of many of them if they enlisted in the British or Australian Army.[27][28] At the end of the war all of the Dunera internees were released.

Also notable were the crew of the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran, taken prisoner following the battle between HMAS Sydney and the Kormoran. They were housed at Camp 13, Murchison, and Dhurringile mansion. There were also about 500 German civilians detained during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in August 1941 and housed initially in the Loveday, S.A.camps, before transfer to the Tatura camps in 1945.[29]

The Tatura German Military Cemetery (36°25′49″S 145°12′20″E / 36.4304°S 145.2055°E / -36.4304; 145.2055) is the final resting place of 351 German civilians and servicemen who died during internment in World War I and World War II.[30]

Industry, agriculture, and food

Organisations in Tatura include Tatura Milk Industries, Goulburn-Murray Water's corporate headquarters, Jacobs Engineering Group, the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, as well as major regional processing plants for multinational corporations such as Unilever and Snow Brand Milk Products.

The Tatura Show is held yearly in March and International Dairy Week (which is the second-largest dairy show in the Southern Hemisphere) in January each year attracting over 6,000 exhibitors, vendors and onlookers from Australia as well as overseas. The Taste of Tatura Food and Wine Festival is held on the first Sunday in March.

Tatura Hot Bread won prizes in the Professional Section of The Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph in 2006, and again in 2007.[31]

Sport

Tatura has many sporting facilities located within the town, including Australian Rules football ovals, soccer fields, cricket pitches, tennis courts, Lawn Bowls greens, a multipurpose indoor stadium and the 18-hole golf course of the Hilltop Golf Club.[32] The town has an Australian Rules football team competing in the Goulburn Valley Football League, the Tatura Bulldogs.[33]

Tatura tennis club hosts an annual labour day round-robin tennis tournament on the grass courts each March.

Tatura is home to the Tatura Racecourse Reserve, where the Tatura & Shepparton Racing Club Inc hosts a minimum of three full TAB race meetings each season, including the Italian Plate Festival in December – a celebration of the local Italian community and culture – and the Tatura Easter Cup. The Cup day also features the Mark Goring Memorial race, honouring jockey Mark Goring who died of injuries sustained in a fall at the Tatura track in 2003.[34][35] As well as a Western & Quarter Horse arena and Club rooms, the Reserve is a thoroughbred training facility, with grass and sand track, and swimming facilities as well as practice barriers and jumps schooling course. 20 Racing Victoria-licensed trainers are registered to the Racecourse. In addition to race meetings, the club also runs regular official trials and jumpouts (unbroadcast trials).[36]

Education

Tatura has two primary schools serving both the town and surrounding areas: Tatura Primary School is a public school located south of the town centre, whilst Sacred Heart School is a private school located on the town's main street. Due to Tatura's proximity to Shepparton, secondary education options include Notre Dame College, Shepparton, Wanganui Park Secondary College, Goulburn Valley Grammar School, Mooroopna Secondary College, Shepparton High School, and McGuire Secondary College.

Tatura is located 20 minutes from La Trobe University Shepparton Campus as well as the Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE which both offer a range of tertiary and TAFE courses for the Goulburn Valley.

Media

The main print publications distributed within Tatura include the daily Shepparton News, the weekly The Adviser Shepparton, the weekly Tatura Guardian, and the monthly Tatura Bulletin.[37]

References

  1. 1 2 Australian Bureau of Statistics (27 June 2017). "Tatura (State Suburb)". 2016 Census QuickStats. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  2. ↑ Phoenix Auctions History, Post Office List, retrieved 11 March 2021
  3. ↑ "Review of Legal Services in Rural and Regional Victoria" (PDF). Parliament of Victoria Law Reform Committee. May 2001. pp. 291–292. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
  4. ↑ Poetics and Politics of Shame in Postcolonial Literature. Routledge. 7 May 2019. ISBN 9780429513756.
  5. ↑ Realisms of the Avant-Garde. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. 21 September 2020. ISBN 9783110637533.
  6. ↑ Poetics and Politics of Shame in Postcolonial Literature. Routledge. 7 May 2019. ISBN 9780429513756.
  7. 1 2 3 "Behind barbed wire: Remembering the Dunera boys". Australian National Maritime Museum.
  8. 1 2 "The Dunera Boys at the National Library of Australia". www.musiques-regenerees.fr.
  9. ↑ The Dunera Internees. Cassell Australia. 1979. ISBN 9780726968037.
  10. ↑ Papers of Eric Liffman. 1940.
  11. ↑ Dunera Lives: A Visual History. Monash University. 2018. ISBN 9781925495492.
  12. 1 2 3 "Matters affecting both enemy prisoners of war and enemy internees"
  13. ↑ "TATURA, VIC. 1943. BARBED WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS AND FENCES AROUND THE PERIMETER OF THE COMPOUNDS OF ..." www.awm.gov.au.
  14. ↑ "TATURA, VIC. 1943. BARBED WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS, BOUNDARY FENCE AND FLOODLIGHTS ON THE PERIMETER OF ..." www.awm.gov.au.
  15. ↑ Captured Lives: Australia's Wartime Internment Camps. National Library of Australia. August 2018. ISBN 9780642279248.
  16. ↑ The Architecture of Confinement: Incarceration Camps of the Pacific War. Cambridge University Press. 24 February 2022. ISBN 9781009020329.
  17. ↑ "To the other side of the world," National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism.
  18. ↑ Harriet Edquist (26 March 2019). "Vienna Abroad: Viennese Interior Design in Australia 1940–1949". RMIT Design Archives Journal; Vol. 9, No. 1.
  19. ↑ Phil Mercer (29 April 2022). "Australian Musical Charts Family's Escape from Nazis in Europe". Voice of America.
  20. 1 2 Fisher, Tim. "Hirschfeld-Mack, Ludwig (1893–1965)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University – via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  21. ↑ McNamara, Andrew (2020). "When the Reality is Unreal: Camps, Towers and Internment". Realisms of the Avant-Garde. pp. 223–244. doi:10.1515/9783110637533-015. ISBN 9783110637533. S2CID 240799822.
  22. ↑ "Prisoners and internees | NGV". www.ngv.vic.gov.au.
  23. ↑ Peter Sculthorpe: The Making of an Australian Composer. NewSouth. October 2015. ISBN 9781742242163.
  24. ↑ The Story of the Beilharz Family: The History of a Family of Black Forest Farmers and Tradespeople, from the 15th to the 20th Century in Germany, in Palestine, in Australia. Heinz W. Beilharz. 1988. ISBN 9780731625116.
  25. ↑ Wawrzyn, Heidemarie (1 August 2013). Nazis in the Holy Land 1933–1948. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-030652-1. In September 1939, the British Mandate government turned the German farming settlements of Sarona, Wilhelma, Bethlehem-Galilee, and Waldheim into large internment camps, while women and children from the German colonies in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa were temporarily permitted to remain in their homes under British and Jewish police surveillance. The four farming settlements were surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, guarded by Jewish and Arab auxiliary police (Hilfspolizisten) under a British commandant with a small staff. German women, children, and elderly men lived in these camps... [In 1941] The British authorities decided to deport more than 600 persons from the younger German families to Australia... They were imprisoned as enemy citizens in detention camps at Tatura in Australia's Victoria state, where they remained until 1946–47...
  26. ↑ The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins. Cambridge University Press. October 2001. ISBN 9780521807890.
  27. ↑ The Holocaust and Australia: Refugees, Rejection, and Memory. Bloomsbury. 28 July 2022. ISBN 9781350185159.
  28. ↑ Four Thousand Lives: The Rescue of German Jewish Men to Britain in 1939. The History Press. 3 March 2014. ISBN 9780750958561.
  29. ↑ False Flags: Disguised German raiders of World War II. Exisle. August 2016. ISBN 9781775593027.
  30. ↑ "Tatura German Military Cemetery | Cemetery Details". CWGC.
  31. ↑ The Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph
  32. ↑ Golf Select, Hill Top, retrieved 11 May 2009
  33. ↑ Full Points Footy, Tatura, archived from the original on 5 July 2008, retrieved 25 July 2008
  34. ↑ "Jockey Goring dies of fall injuries". 14 January 2003.
  35. ↑ Country Racing Victoria, Tatura & Shepparton Racing Club, archived from the original on 19 October 2007, retrieved 7 May 2009
  36. ↑ "Home".
  37. ↑ "Tatura Bullletin - The community voice". taturabulletin.com.au.
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