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June 23, 2011
Australia, as many know, loves detention centres or internment camps. Since the early 1990s we have lived with immigration detention centers, mostly for asylum seekers. Australia has a policy and system of mandatory immigration detention.
These detention centres have an institutional past, namely the camps where Australian citizens of German origin were interned, and they are similar to the WWII Japanese Internment Camps in the U.S..
Barbed wire fence and watchtower, Holsworthy internment camp, New South Wales, ca.1917 [NLA].
They were similar to the WWII Japanese Internment Camps in the U.S., and they were built like the ones in Germany, with double fences, barbed wired and with watch towers.
There was a vitriolic hatred of all things German in Australia during 1914-8 by British Australians.
Barbed wire fence, Holsworthy internment camp, New South Wales, ca.1917 [NLA].
The camp absorbed prisoners from the famed Torrens Island Concentration Camp in 1915. Torrens Island, in the Port River, was the site of a concentration camp which earned a notorious reputation for brutality.
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