About this object
Registration label from Cue, blue, rectangular, dated 29 August 1940.
Envelope is addressed to 'Mr Severino Galantino/Mine/Cue.'
Also attached: King George V 5d Yellow Brown postage stamp(s); Black ink postmark from Cue (C30-b type).
Harvey Internment Camp
Severino Galantino, Prisoner PWW.12712, 1940
In 1927, Italian-born Severino Barbaro Galantino arrived in Western Australia at the age of twenty-three, where he found work as a charcoal burner and miner in the mid-western goldfields including settlements at York, Southern Cross, Narembeen, Bruce Rock, Mt Magnet, Cue, Reedy, Big Bell, New Norcia and Meekatharra.
After a decade, Severino announced his intention to renounce his Italian citizenship and become a naturalised Australian subject. However, his paperwork was delayed and when Italy entered the Second World War in support of Germany on June 10th, 1940, Severino, like thousands of other Italian migrants in Australia, was labelled an ‘enemy alien’.
Subject to suspicion and scrutiny, ‘enemy aliens’ faced a number of restrictions. They were required to register with the police, forbidden from driving cars, changing addresses without permission, or even owning radios or binoculars. But in many cases, aliens were arrested and imprisoned in camps across the country. In WA, people of Italian extraction like Severino made up the majority of internees: out of a national total of 1,901 Italian-descended individuals, 1,044 were interned in Western Australia.
Credit: "The Foreign Element", 1940, The Yalgoo Observer and Murchison Chronicle,
Meekatharra, (courtesy of the National Library of Australia, Trove, article identifier 233665663)
Addressed to Severino in August 1940, this letter could not be delivered as its recipient was arrested on June 12th and swiftly imprisoned at the No 11 Internment Camp in Harvey. The first purpose-built internment camp in Western Australia, Number Eleven held over 1,000 internees in a compound comprised of sixty-eight barracks, several dining huts, detention cells, workshops and shower rooms, and encircled by nearly two-metre-high barbed wire fencing.
Fortunately, Severino was released on parole in November 1940. He returned to Cue where he continued to live and work under the enemy aliens’ restrictions for the remainder of the war. In June 1945, he once again announced his intention to naturalise, but his certificate was not granted until 1947 – two decades after he had first arrived.
- Neumann, K. (2006), In the Interest of National Security: Civilian Internment in Australia during World War II’, National Archives of Australia: Canberra, < https://eshop.naa.gov.au/p/645295/in-the-interest-of-national-security.html >
- Bunbury, B. (1995). Rabbits & Spaghetti: Captives and Comrades, Australians, Italians, and the War, 1939-1945, Talking History. Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
- Spizzica, M, (2012 September 20), ‘When ethnicity counts: civilian internment in Australia during WW2’, The Conversation, < https://theconversation.com/whenethnicity-counts-civilian-internment-in-australia-during-ww2-3273 >, accessed March 2024
- Grossetti, A, (2016, November 28), ‘Enemy aliens: How my family’s lives were changed by Australia’s wartime internment camps’, ABC Radio National, < https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-28/enemy-aliens-australias-wartimeinternment-camps/8053112 > accessed June 2023
- “Macaroni By The Mile” (1940, June 23). Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 - 1954), p. 8. < http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58979211 >, accessed December 2023
- “The Foreign Element” (1940, October 11). The Yalgoo Observer and Murchison Chronicle (Meekatharra, WA: 1923 - 1941), p. 4. < http://nla.gov.au/nla.newsarticle233665663 >, accessed December 2023
- “Aliens And Enemies” (1940, December 3). The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1955), p. 4 < http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article78536707 >, accessed December 2023
