About this Event
In 1940, refugees from Nazi persecution who had fled to Britain were suddenly classified as enemy aliens, transported to Australia on the ship Dunera, and held in camps in Hay, Orange and Tatura.
In their attempts to recreate traces of their former lives, internees ran a remarkable range of activities inside the camps, from art classes to university-style lectures and theatrical performances. As a result, they produced an extraordinary array of personal art and artefacts, from beautiful portraits and landscapes to pop-up paper models and even an unofficial camp currency.
The Library has spent many years compiling collections that piece together this little-known chapter in Australia history and now holds one of largest Dunera collections in the world.
At this special panel event, hear remarkable, stirring and confronting Dunera stories, as told by several descendants.
Karin Altmann is a script and story consultant in the film industry. Since 2009 she has been Head of Development at scriptWorks, working on feature film, television drama and documentary projects. Karin currently consults on documentary, television drama and feature film projects, and teaches regularly at the VCA Film School in Melbourne. She is a recipient the Dorothy Crawford Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Industry presented by the Australian Writers Guild, and the Richard Lane Award for service to the Guild.
Belinda Castles is the award-winning author of four novels, including Hannah and Emil, a fictionalised account of her grandparents’ lives, including her grandfather’s escape from Nazi Germany and wartime transport to Australia on HMT Dunera. Belinda is also the editor of the collection Reading like an Australian Writer and is working on a book about walks with writers in Sydney. She is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney.
Nicholas Gruen is an economist, entrepreneur and commentator on our economy and our democracy. He has Visiting/Adjunct Professorships at Kings College London and UTS. He chaired the internationally acclaimed Federal Government’s Government 2.0 Taskforce in 2009 and several successful software companies including Kaggle which was acquired by Google in 2017.
Seumas Spark is an historian with a particular interest in the Dunera internees. He is co-author of the two-volume history Dunera Lives (Monash University Publishing, 2018 and 2020), and co-editor (with Jacquie Houlden) of Shadowline: The Dunera Diaries of Uwe Radok (2022). With his colleague Kate Garrett, he runs the Dunera Stories website.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
State Library of New South Wales, The Library Auditorium, Lower Ground 1, Macquarie Building, Sydney, Australia
AUD 0.00