About
The Benalla Migrant Camp Exhibition was first opened on 26th January 2013 - as a temporary installation in honour of Benalla’s post WW2 migrants. Benalla had a sizeable migrant camp but already (almost fifty years since it closed) its history was little known and many of the original residents had died.
A local volunteer project coordinator (that is me, Sabine Smyth) began from scratch by making phone calls and using networks to find addresses of former residents who had moved away. During visits to our house and over cups of coffee, I scanned hundreds of original photographs and documents and my husband Mike printed them for display. From this I put in place an exhibition in one of the former migrant huts, to tell the stories of the migrant families through their own photographs and recollections. We painted the hut walls in their original (still visible underneath) cream colour, and simply pinned the photos to the wall - in family groups. We paid for everything ourselves.
The exhibition created considerable interest (by memory over a thousand visitors in four days) and this motivated a group of volunteers to form a committee (chaired by me) and to become incorporated. We left the exhibition in place and most importantly, we kept welcoming visitors, gathering materials and documents.
This is what our collection is all about - we want to tell the story of what it was like to live in the camp, and how camp life shaped its residents. Oral histories also tell us how children remember camp life. The 'camp kids' are now in their later years, and are looking back at this formative time in their lives with a deeper understanding of what their parents had gone through.
The camp was locally known as ‘Balt Camp’ and operated in Benalla from 1949-1967. A former RAAF training centre at the airport on the edge of town had been quickly repurposed into a ‘migrant holding centre’ capable of housing and feeding a maximum of 500 migrants. The Department of Immigration estimated that approximately 60,000 migrants lived at the camp, many for several years and the longest residents needing to be rehomed after living in the camp about 17 years.
The collection consists of about 1,200 black and white photographs which have been scanned from originals provided by former camp migrant families. There are also about 200 items such as wooden sea chests, suitcases, books, clothing, items made at the camp, camp stretchers, items of bed linen, blankets, documents, pieces of furniture, Australian citizenship papers.
In the past ten years the collection has grown to include recorded and filmed oral histories, a history book written by Dr Bruce Pennay OAM and a contemporary portrait photography series taken by photographer Helga Salwe in 2014.
The exhibition is physically located in Benalla, at Hut 11 as part of the Benalla Airport complex. It features many of the items in our collection. Although the exhibition is currently closed due to restoration works on the site, it is normally open on the first Sunday of the month, and by appointment for family and tour groups. We estimate that we will reopen next year, or early 2026 at the latest. (The site is owned by Benalla Rural City Council.)
We welcome inquiries from academics, and are in fact on the lookout for academic partners to even better document the important and interesting history of this camp. Contact us via www.benallamigrantcamp.com.au
