Camp 6 near Graytown and Camp 5 near Myrtleford housed enemy servicemen who had been captured from around the world and then transported to Australia. The remaining camps near Tatura held migrants deemed a security risk to Australia by virtue of their nationality.

Graytown

The town was surveyed in 1869 and named ‘Moormbool’ before being renamed Graytown after Moses William Gray, a parliamentarian for the local Rodney electorate between 1860-1864. Graytown is a gold mining ghost town between Heathcote and Nagambie. At its peak in 1868, it had an estimated population of 20,000 Graytown and was known as Spring Creek when gold was discovered in September 1868. Over the next few months, over 30,000 people arrived, drawn by the lure of striking it rich.

The businesses and public houses followed. Tents and rough shanties made way for wooden buildings and by June 1869, there were two hundred and sixteen beer houses! The town also sported thirty-six butchers, fourteen bakeries, seventeen general stores, five banks, four chemists, six doctors, two newspapers, five soft drink manufacturers, ten drapers, eight restaurants, six tobacconists, ten boot makers, six timber yards, eighteen blacksmiths, two watchmakers, three ironmongers, two tin smiths and seventy-two unknown stores.

A Cobb & Co Station and nineteen Police Officers also serviced the town. Life was hard, and illegal mining was a problem, along with larrikinism. Families often had their children sleep on the floor to avoid stray revolver shots. However, the alluvial gold was soon exhausted; by 1870, the population had dropped to around 150. In 1870 a flood inundated the mines and destroyed several buildings. By the 1960s, most of the local population had moved on and the buildings relocated to other towns.

The Kormoran

The German merchant raider Kormoran held 393 officers and men. Of these, 315 officers and men and three of the four Chinese (taken captive when the Kormoran sank the Eurylochus 10 months earlier) were saved when the Kormoran was sunk. Unfortunately, approximately 20 of the crew were killed during the battle, with the remainder drowning when their overloaded raft capsized. The Aquitania picked some up on her way to Sydney; the Trocas recovered others on her way to Fremantle.

Once on the land, nineteen were hospitalised while the remainder were distributed between barracks. Following the interrogations, they were then transferred to Victoria’s internment camps. The officers came to Victoria on the liner Duntroon on December 13th, while the sailors were transported by train in two groups. Two prisoners deemed too ill to travel stayed behind in Fremantle. One of them, Erich Meyer, died three months later of lung cancer. He became the only crew member to die on Australian soil.

Dhurringile

Arriving in Melbourne, the prisoners were transferred to Murchison POW camp, where they were joined by those whom the Aquitania had rescued. The officers were then transferred to Dhurringile, a 65-room mansion about ten miles from the Murchison camp. The military had leased Dhurringile as accommodation for prisoners of war. One of the most successful POW escapes happened at Dhurringile in 1945 when 17 officers and three batmen tunnelled 14 feet down from a large crockery room and under a perimeter fence. The heritage-listed mansion is now a working dairy farm, minimum security prison, and part of Corrections Victoria.

Camp #6

The Graytown POW camp held captured sailors and was designated Camp 6. Approximately 250 Italian and German POWs were detained at Camp 6 Graytown POW Camp. The German POWs mainly were crew members from the German raider ship “Kormoran”, which had sunk the HMAS Sydney off the Western Australian coast. Additionally, some Finnish seamen were also held at Camp 6 Graytown.

Each compound was enclosed by a double row of wire fencing 2 metres high with coiled barbed wire in between. Guard towers stood at each corner, with the perimeter lit at night. Each of the timber-framed barracks held twenty men. Kitchens, mess huts, shower blocks, laundries and latrines were all located within each compound.

The surrounding forest had been cut for firewood since Graytowns settlement, and POWs were put to work cutting firewood in the forest. The area now forms Graytown State Forest, and timber cutting has been illegal since 2002.

Repatriation

By 1943 the Kormoran men had been transferred from Murchison to Camp 6 (a timber felling camp) at Graytown. Others were transferred to Tatura. Finally, the prisoners returned to Europe on the Orontes in 1947.

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