Reflections on the Dunera Exhibition
Dunera exhibition banner
Dunera exhibition showcases
Curating the National Library of Australia’s collection-in-focus exhibition The Dunera Boys: Seventy Years On,which opened in February this year, has been a rare priviledge. Developing it was fascinating and emotional for me and my fellow curator Penelope Grist. Responses to it have been numerous, unexpected and stirring. Visitors, emails and phone calls have kept coming. The exhibition coincides with the 70th anniversary of HMT Dunera’s arrival in Australia. Following Penny’s previous Gateways article about the exhibition, it feels timely to outline the talks, meetings and tours of the last months, and to signal plans for the remainder of the exhibition.
HMT Dunera arrived in Australia in 1940, carrying over 2500 passengers, most of whom were ‘enemy aliens’. They were German, Austrian and Italian men and boys who had found themselves in Great Britain at the beginning of the Second World War only to be interned, and then transferred to Australia. Many were of Jewish heritage and had escaped from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The internees were disembarked at Port Melbourne, Victoria, and at Pyrmont, Sydney, and made their way by train to rural camps at Tatura in Victoria, and at Hay in New South Wales. In a thematic yet personal way, the exhibition explores how these men and boys came to be interned, how they experienced daily life in internment, the efforts made to help them and how the Dunera Boys have remembered their internment. About 850 decided to stay in Australia. The exhibition draws on the Library’s growing Dunera material in the Manuscripts, Pictures, Oral History, Music, Newspapers and the Rare Books collections, and is supplemented by a number of private loans.
The exhibition continues to stimulate reactions months after it opened. Emails have reached us from unexpected places, including Belgium, Canada and Norway. In reply, tubes filled with our exhibition poster have whizzed all over the world. We have been touched and absorbed by the memories and living history so many have shared with us. These have enabled us to put faces to names and to find out what happened to Dunera Boys we had been unable to trace beyond the Second World War. Until recently, we knew their art and words well, but little else. Frequently, families and friends of Dunera Boys hear about the exhibition and they contact us. It has been fascinating to see ‘the grapevine’ at work.
An undoubted highlight has been our contact with several Dunera Boys, who have so generously and frequently shared their time, memories and opinions. This contact has ranged from calls from a cheerful Melbourne-based Dunera Boy interested in how he could help, to a postcard from London from a Dunera Boy artist. Most of all, we have benefitted from the visits and generosity of local Canberra Dunera Boys, Bern Brent and Michael Brent, who given so much of their time to talk to us and to the media.
In the exhibition space, the oral history presentation has been popular. Additional seating was required soon after the exhibition opened. Our volunteer guides have taken exhibition tours on weekends and by appointment, meeting Dunera Boys and their families, and have been as affected by the immediacy as we have. The visitors’ book has taken on a life of its own, becoming an essential part of the exhibition, a forum for people to share their memories of Dunera Boys, record their reactions to the exhibition, and to debate issues it raises.
Between February and May 2010, we had a number of lectures and a documentary scheduled. In February, I gave an introductory overview of the exhibition. In March, Holocaust scholar Dr Paul Bartrop unravelled the complicated political and administrative background to the Dunera Boys’ internment. In April we showed When Friends were Enemies (1991), a documentary that centred around celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Dunera Boys’ arrival in Australia. The documentary includes interviews with many of the ‘Boys’ featured in the exhibition. Also in April, Associate Professor Renate Howe spoke about the Australian Student Christian Movement and, in particular, about Margaret Holmes, whose collection we hold at the Library. Miss Holmes was remembered by many Dunera Boys for the help she gave them in completing their education in camp and in adapting to life after internment. Finally, in May, Penny Grist discussed Dunera Boys’ correspondence. Selected talks are available online.
Finally, we have planned a seminar afternoon for 27 August 2010, called The Dunera Boys Remembered. With interviews, readings and talks, it will be the major event of the exhibition. Further details will be posted to our website soon.*
For me, being a curator is about discovering and sharing what material culture can tell us about the past. It is very rewarding that this exhibition has brought memories alive and inspired many to share theirs with us.
Susannah Helman
Assistant Curator, Exhibitions



