Loveday Internment Camp Site & Collection

In 1941 the quiet irrigation flats south of Barmera became, almost overnight, one of the most unusual communities in wartime Australia. The Loveday internment complex — Camps 9, 10 and 14, with headquarters between them — grew into the largest of its kind in the country, holding 5,380 internees of German, Italian and Japanese descent at its peak, with more than 1,500 Australian military personnel running it.

Loveday's strangest distinction is agricultural. Its internees farmed so productively — vegetables, seed crops, pigs and poultry, plus opium poppies grown for army morphine and pyrethrum daisies for insect repellent — that Loveday became the only internment camp in Australia to turn a profit. Wood-cutting camps at Woolenook, Katarapko and Moorook West fed the boilers, and traces of all of it remain in the landscape.

Today the story is best approached from both ends: the permanent Loveday Internment Collection at the Barmera Visitor Information Centre supplies the photographs, objects and voices, and the heritage-listed precinct around Loveday Hall on Thiele Road — in the care of the local council — anchors the site itself. Note that much of the former camp area is private farmland, so explore respectfully from public roads. The full story is told in Behind the Wire, and pairs well with a visit to Cobdogla's irrigation museum nearby.