Rowville POW Camp
Rowville, KNOX CITY
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Statement of Significance
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Veterans Description for Public
Rowville POW Camp - Veterans Description for Public
The site of the Rowville POW Camp dates from the Second World War and was located on Stud and Wellington Roads. The camp was built in 1942 and decommissioned in 1945, and was used as a military and 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.The remainder of the camp consists of fourteen concrete building foundations, a 24,000 gallon steel storage tank foundation and a concrete culvert.
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STAMFORD PARK HOMESTEAD PRECINCTVictorian Heritage Inventory
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Old Police Barracks - RowvilleNational Trust
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Rowville War MemorialVic. War Heritage Inventory
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