Thursday, April 24, 2008

shade pictures


This eBay item could be about an interesting bit of Rotto history. We’ve had to tinker and fiddle with Babelfish, but it says:

Behind Australian stone and barbed wire. Shade pictures from the Australian prisoner-of-war camps Rottnest Island, Trial Bay, Liverpool, Holdsworthy, Berrima. By Martin Trojan.

What are ‘shade pictures’? Pictures taken illicitly? We dunno.
Weltkrieg means World War, of course, but is it the First or the Second?
The bit of copy above the image says something like: for cruiser Emden crew Tsingtau caught.

It must be WW1. The SMS Emden was polished off by the HMAS Sydney at the Battle of Cocos. So some of the German survivors were kept on Rottnest for a while?

Seems so. As were others: ‘Just after war was declared in August 1914 the Royal Australian Navy's HMAS Pioneer captured two German merchant vessels off Fremantle, Thuringen & Neumunster. The German officers & sailors from these ships were held for a short while at Rottnest Island before being shipped off to internment on the east coast of Australia.’

This from the RIA’s site: ‘With the start of World War I the Department of Defence commandeered the Island for use as an internment and Prisoner of War camp from 1914 to the end of 1915. In September 1915, the camp held 989 persons, including 841 Austrian and German internees and 148 Prisoners of War. Recreational and holiday pursuits were re-established in December 1915.’

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