Rowville prisoner of war camp buildings, 1945.

Tony Cosentino writes:

Rowville prisoner of war camp buildings, from the Argus newspaper collection of war photographs, World War II, originally captioned ‘Rosehill (Dandenong) camp 1945. Between December 1944 and August 1946, over 2,600 Italian prisoners of war passed through the camp. 

The Rowville hostel was a low security facility and, unlike other camps, was not enclosed by a wire fence or gated entrances; instead, it was surrounded by a farming fence consisting of a single strand of wire. Rodolfo Bartoli, a 26-year-old Italian soldier from Florence, was shot and killed by the camp commandant, Captain Waterston, on 30 March 1946.

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