Connie Levett; 21/12/08
It was a throwaway line from old Uncle Gordon: “We had a lot of ‘Javos’ in Wallangarra during the war.” That comment would set Jan Lingard’s course for the next decade as she asked why more than 350 Indonesians were camped in the remote NSW-Queensland border town. And what were others doing behind wire in Cowra and Casino? “It blew my mind,” said Lingard, an Indonesian language academic who discovered 5500 “Javos”, or Indonesians, were interned and later conscripted for the military effort between 1942 and 1947. Their stories are told for the first time in Lingard’s book Refugees And Rebels: Indonesian Exiles In Wartime Australia. Lingard spoke with Indonesian internees and the Australians who remembered them.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/revealed-australias-secret-labour-camps/2008/12/20/1229189946880.html; http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/from-the-jungle-to-cowras-winter/2008/12/20/1229189946883.html
