History
CAPTURED LIVES-Australia's Wartime Internment Camps
Book review by Peter McCullough
Australia's contribution in World War One is well known: from a population of less than 5 million, an astounding number exceeding 400,000 would enlist. Of these, some 60,000 would not return. However, as Peter Monteath points out in “Captured Lives�, Australia itself could not remain untouched by war and had to consider how to deal with the 'enemy at home'- people whose nationality was that of one of the states with which Australia was locked in battle.
E ssence
96 | PENINSULA
October 2018
At first that meant Germans, but over time it meant many others including people from Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria. The rate of arrest and detention of people who provoked the suspicion of the authorities, or even their neighbours, grew in the second year of the war. It peaked in May, 1915, when the casualty lists from Gallipoli were being published. Many of those interned because of the suspicions levelled against them were bewildered by their treatment. Their frustration was compounded by the harsh reality that they had no idea when the war might end and when they might be released.