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Army Camp / POW Camp

Australian troops of the 3rd Motor Brigade moved into the Rowville Military Camp on 18 May 1942. The camp was sited on a 109 hectare area north of the present Timbertop Drive. The troops were to be used as a strategic reserve in the event of a Japanese invasion in the Westernport region. When the likelihood of such an event passed, the soldiers were moved out in September 1942 and they were replaced by American troops. When the Americans went off to the Pacific war zones their places in the camp were taken in late 1944 by Italian Prisoners of War who had been captured in North Africa.

By June 1945, the number of prisoners had grown to about three hundred and the role of the camp was changing to that of a staging camp. This meant that all Italian prisoners being moved from camp to camp or onto farms as labourers were processed here in Rowville. A total of two thousand six hundred prisoners passed through the Rowville camp before the last of the prisoners were repatriated to Italy in 1946.


  • BRIAN SEYMOUR REMEMBERS

    In 1945 Brian Seymour was a 12 year old school boy when his father was posted to the Rowville POW Camp as the senior non-commissioned officer.

    In this article Brian tells of the time he spent at the camp with his dad and of the friendships he made with the prisoners whom he remembers as being “great people”.

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  • Frank Rimington and Ernie Ashwin Remember

    In the August 1998 edition of the News I published an account by Frank Rimington of the time he spent at the Rowville Military Camp in 1942. Shortly after I met Frank in 1998 he took me to meet an old Army friend, Ernie Ashwin, and I spent a very pleasant afternoon listening to them tell the stories of their days in Rowville all those years ago.

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  • RIMINGTON & ASHWIN Frank Rimington and Ernie Ashwin Remember

    In the August 1998 edition of the R-LCNews I published an account by Frank Rimington of the time he spent at the Rowville Military Camp in 1942.
    Shortly after I met Frank in 1998 he took me to meet an old army friend, Ernie Ashwin, and I spent a very pleasant afternoon listening to them tell their stories of their days in Rowville all those years ago.

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  • RIMINGTON Frank Rimington Remembers

    Frank Rimington had joined the militia before Japan entered the Second World War in December 1941. He did his basic training at Ocean Grove before being posted to Rowville with the rank of corporal in March 1942. Here he was assigned to the 2nd Australian Field Squadron of the Royal Australian Engineers. The following are Frank’s notes of his time at the Rowville Army Camp the entrance to which from Stud Road was at the top of the hill just to the north of the present Timbertop Drive.

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  • SCANDAL AS MELBOURNE GIRL WEDS ESCAPEE FROM ROWVILLE POW CAMP

    On 20 September 1947 the Melbourne Truth newspaper ran a front page story in which it raged against the granting of a leave pass to a detained Italian POW escapee, Francesco Ponzoni, to enable him to marry his Australian sweetheart, June Peterson.
    Despite the fact that hundreds of Australian war brides had left our shores to live with their G.I. husbands in America, the Truth attempted to whip up a scandal about this isolated case thus showing that anti Italian prejudices were still running deeply even though the war had ended more than two years previously.

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  • SCANDAL AS MELBOURNE GIRL WEDS ESCAPEE FROM ROWVILLE POW CAMP

    On 20 September 1947 the Melbourne Truth newspaper ran a front page story in which it raged against the granting of a leave pass to a detained Italian POW escapee, Francesco Ponzoni, to enable him to marry his Australian sweetheart, June Peterson.
    Despite the fact that hundreds of Australian war brides had left our shores to live with their G.I. husbands in America, the Truth attempted to whip up a scandal about this isolated case thus showing that anti Italian prejudices were still running deeply even though the war had ended more than two years previously.

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  • STURROCK (nee BICKERTON) Mary Sturrock Remembers

    Mary recalled that her strongest first impression of Rowville was the smell of percolated coffee brewing on the wood stove of the farm in Wellington Road that her father had bought from Bill Phillips in 1936. She had left Geelong with her father early one morning in his 1928 Chevrolet National to drive to Rowville and of all the impressions made on her nine-year old mind that exciting day, the smell of Mrs Phillip's coffee has always been the most vivid in her memory.

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  • THE ROWVILLE AND LYSTERFIELD MILITARY CAMPS

    In 1955 Councillor Violet Lambert, who was one of the councillors representing the South Riding of the Shire of Ferntree Gully, was the Chairperson of the Council’s Historical Records Committee. The Committee was responsible for the publication of the history of the shire, “Story of the Dandenongs”, and assisted its author, Helen Coulson, in her research. Cr Lambert was particularly active in chasing up information for the book and the article below records the response from Sir George Knox to her enquiry about his wartime role in the Rowville and Lysterfield district.
    Sir George Knox had been a Ferntree Gully Shire Councillor between 1923 and 1928 and a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly representing the seat of Upper Yarra from 1927 to 1945 and the seat of Scoresby from 1945 until his death in 1960
    Sir George Knox had served with distiction in WW1 as commander of the 23rd A.I.F Battalion at Gallipoli and in France. When Japan entered WW2 in 1941 he was appointed - with the rank of Brigadier - to command the military forces in the area from Point Nepean to Western Port.
    The City of Knox was named in his honour.

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  • THE ROWVILLE WATER SYNDICATE

    The following account was prepared by an unknown author. I'd be grateful if anybody could let me know who the person is so that he/she can be acknowledged. I believe that the story may have been one of several documents written by local people in the mid 1950s to assist Helen Coulson with the writing of "Story of the Dandenongs".
    This account tells of the dogged persistence of Rowville landholders in the 1950s to obtain a reticulated water supply. Their efforts were extraordinary. First there was their never-say-die lobbying and then their months of toil. Just imagine weekend working bees over three months to dig a trench almost a metre deep over a distance of more than four kilometres. And all with hand tools! That's persistence with a capital P. The Rowville Water Syndicate provided the only reticulated drinking water in the area until large scale development extended gradually from the north to the south in Rowville from the mid 1970s onwards.
    Bryan Power

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  • THE STARLIGHT RESERVE

    Knox City Council recently installed signs in Starlight Reserve (Melway Ref 81 G5) to inform visitors of its history and indigenous plant life. Two signs describe the period from 1942 to 1946 when the Starlight Reserve and the area to the north of the reserve (all the way to Wellington Road) was an Army camp used by Australian and American forces and then used as a prisoner of war camp for Italian prisoners.

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