Publication Date: Sep 2020
RRP: $39.95
ISBN: 9781925835656
Format: Paperback
Size: 170mm x 245mm
Pages: 576
Category: Australian History, Biography, History

Dunera Lives

Profiles

Bill Gammage, Ken Inglis, Seumas Spark, Jay Winter and Carol Bunyan


‘In the way it traces the lives of “Dunera boys” before, during and after internment, Dunera Lives: Profiles is narrative history in one of its most engaging and moving forms.’ Raimond Gaita

This book has been my companion through the Adelaide Covid lockdown, and it has been so engrossing the lockdown just passed. This is a social history we could well learn from.’ Gail Gunn, Sabretache journal

Visit the Dunera stories website and online gallery


The story of the ‘Dunera Boys’ is an intrinsic part of the history of Australia in the Second World War and in its aftermath. The injustice these 2000 men suffered through British internment in camps at Hay, Tatura and Orange is well known. Less familiar is the tale of what happened to them afterwards. Following on from volume one Dunera Lives: A Visual History (2018), Dunera Lives: Profiles continues the saga in life stories.

This second volume of Dunera Lives presents the voices, faces, and lives of 20 people, who, together with nearly 3000 other internees from Britain and Singapore, landed in Australia in 1940. All over the world there were Dunera Lives, those of men and women who passed through the upheavals of the Second World War and survived to tell the tale. Here are some of their stories.

A contribution to the history of Australia, to the history of migrants and migration, and to the history of human rights, these two volumes put in the public domain a story whose full dimensions and complexity have never been described.


Bill Gammage

Bill Gammage was a student, colleague and friend of Ken Inglis. He studied at the Australian National University, and taught Australian and Pacific history at the universities of Papua New Guinea and Adelaide.
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Ken Inglis

Ken Inglis (1929–2017) was an Adjunct Professor at Monash University, and Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. He was one of Australia’s most admired and warmly regarded historians.
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Seumas Spark

Dr Seumas Spark is an Adjunct Fellow in History at Monash University
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Jay Winter

Jay Winter  is Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University, and Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. He is a historian of the First World War.
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Carol Bunyan

Carol Bunyan studied history at the Australian National University, and later was a public servant. She was born in Hay; this link led to her interest in researching the Dunera story. Her association with Ken Inglis began when they met at...
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