Interned

Gretta is having afternoon tea with her father in the Raffles Hotel (Singapore) when he is arrested by British soldiers. She arrives home to discover that the soldiers have already been there and will return the next day to take her and her mother to the same internment camp as her father. Their beautiful home, and all that is in it, will be confiscated.

The camp is surrounded by barbed wire fencing. Inside its boundaries, some 300 people are crammed into a building with very little space, no privacy, and insufficient facilities. Everything requires a queue—the bathrooms, the awful food, the laundry. They feel like prisoners, but are assured by the authorities that they have really just been interned as ‘enemy aliens’. With no schooling, the boredom seems never-ending. Months pass before they are eventually informed that they are being sent to Australia.

At the end of a long journey they arrive at a small country town in New South Wales. The men are taken to the local jail, while the women and children are delivered to an old hotel, long abandoned, and left to try and make it habitable on their own. To make matters worse, their already minimal luggage has been roughly searched and some of it stolen.

Local attitudes towards them are mixed. Some put up with them, others are blatantly rude, and a rare few are quietly accepting. They can attend the local church but the service is in English, which many of them don’t understand very well. The schoolmaster will have nothing to do with any of them, so the German children cannot attend school. The men are allowed out of the jail during the day, which adds some small semblance of normality.

While Gretta’s life was being turned upside down in Singapore, so was Tilly’s in Queensland. Within weeks of the war between Germany and England being announced, attitudes towards Germans quickly deteriorated. Former friends and customers no longer want to come to their family bakery, and as propaganda posters pop up around town, Tilly and her family start hearing terms like Huns, Krauts, and Jerries. Words that are soon being used against them.

Tilly’s father grew up in Germany and despite being a naturalised Australian, living here for 15 years, having an Australian wife and two Australian born children, he is suddenly viewed as an enemy alien. Their bakery is vandalised, customers stop coming, and they are regularly harassed.

With two local boys continuously harassing them and vandalising their shop, Tilly’s little brother Franz gets so frustrated that he tears down some of the posters. Those same boys report him to the police and, when they turn up at the shop, his father takes the blame. They take him to the police station and then send him to a detention camp as an enemy alien.

When Tilly’s father hasn’t returned by the next morning, her mother is so distressed she can’t think clearly. Tilly goes to the police station and is told he probably won’t be home until the war ends.

Tilly and her brother continue going to school and try to keep things as normal as possible, while their mother has good days and bad days. Their father is allowed to send them a single postcard each week, with a maximum of 150 words—all in English. Life continues until they receive a message that all internment camps in Australia are being closed, except those in New South Wales. Their father is being sent to Bornabba.

Their mother is living under the illusion that if they just follow him, they will be reunited and life will be back to normal. It will take nearly all they have left to buy the train tickets, but Tilly‘s mother still thinks that once they are reunited with her father, he will take care of everything, therefore running out of money doesn’t matter. On the long train journey to Bornabba, they sing songs to pass the time.

As much as Tilly’s father is happy to see his family, he is very worried about his wife’s mental state. It is not even known if the authorities will allow them to stay, so they decide to just keep quiet about how they ended up there.

Bornabba is where the lives of Tilly and Gretta converge. They end up as neighbours, and while their initial contact doesn’t auger well, the two end up as the best of friends. None of them had any idea they would end up staying in Bornabba for four long years.

Tilly’s life is increasingly wrapped in caring for her mother, who now cannot be left alone. They fear the authorities discovering the extent of her illness and removing the children from her care.

Then, early in 1918, the internees with families are told they will be moved to Molonglo. Tilly’s family is on the list, until the authorities discover that they are there unofficially. As far as the army is concerned, they do not exist and cannot go to Molonglo. However, in a sign of bureaucracy gone mad, because Tilly’s father was already on the list, he must go. Despite his many protests, he is sent off with the rest of the families, leaving Tilly, her brother Franz, and their mother alone. The only internees left are the single men in the camp and they do their best to help ensure Tilly and her family are looked after, but the separation is, of course, very hard.

In November 1918, the Kaiser steps down and Germany surrenders. They hear stories of how bad the situation is in Germany, with political unrest and instability, lack of food, and lack of work. Then comes the outbreak of the Spanish flu. By January 1919 it had reached the general population of Sydney.

By May, the interred families were all sent home to Germany via ship. Tilly’s father and even men who had been born in Australia and spoke no German (but had German parents or grandparents) were sent with them.

When Tilly’s father’s first letter finally reaches them, he tells them they have been delayed in Durban because there have been cases of the Spanish flu on board. Although he is well, some of the young people have died, including Tilly’s beloved friend, Gretta.

With her father out of reach, Tilly’s family decide to return to their home in Queensland, however when they arrive they discover it has been burnt to the ground. With very little money, they rent rooms nearby. There is still a lot of bad feeling towards Germans, so Franz changes his name to Frank Miller and quickly obtains work at the local brewery caring for the horses, while Tilly takes on a night job so they can ensure her mother is never alone.

When Tilly’s mother falls ill, the doctor informs them she has the Spanish flu and she is taken to an isolation hospital. Tilly and Frank are not allowed to see her and within two days she passes away.

It becomes clear that their father, having been deported from Australia, will never be allowed to return, and the siblings realise that they must travel to Germany if they are ever to see him again…

This outstanding book provides a very accessible picture of the experiences of interned Germans (including 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants) in Australia during the war and the actions of our government and community during that time. Enjoyable for its own sake, this thought-provoking middle grade fiction may encourage readers to think about how they would treat Australia’s migrant population—or be treated due to their cultural heritage—in similar circumstances.

An author’s note in the back of the book provides supporting facts around the number of men, women and children who were interned, their heritage and their experiences. This includes a Lutheran priest whose grandparents were German, and who was jailed as a ‘warning’ to other Germans, and a man whose Australian-born son was in the Australian army.

war, prejudice, racism, fear, choices, internment camps, bureaucracy, friendship, family, separation, displacement, Germans, migrants, Spanish flu

1. Brief reference to the soldiers having to tell a family interned in Singapore that the body of their 18-year-old daughter—who had run into the jungle to escape them—had been found at the bottom of a cliff (p37). No descriptions. 2. Tilly’s mother clearly suffers from mental illness, but it is never diagnosed.