Interned: Torrens Island 1914-1915

In August 1914 war broke out across Europe. Within months hundreds of men - ‘enemy aliens’ - were interned on Torrens Island, in the Port River estuary near Adelaide. Sailors taken off enemy ships, foreign nationals living in South Australia, and even some naturalised British subjects found themselves behind barbed wire.

Wartime censorship meant people outside knew next to nothing about internment or life in the camp. The camp commandant’s brutal behaviour was revealed only years later.

Today, the observations of two internees survive in the diaries of professional boxer Frank Bungardy and the compelling photographs of Paul Dubotzki. These extraordinary sources, brought together in Interned, tell the little-known story of South Australia’s ‘enemy within’ - a story as timely now as it has ever been.