HERITAGE Victoria has made the rare decision to overturn an earlier resolution and declare a key part of Benalla’s history to be of cultural significance.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Benalla Migrant Camp site and remaining structures now will be included in the Victorian Heritage Register after a determination released on Thursday.
“The camp was Victoria’s longest-lasting holding centre,” Heritage Victoria said.
“It played a distinctive role in settling vulnerable groups of non-British migrants into Australia in the post-war years.”
The body said the Benalla camp should be seen as complementing the Bonegilla Migrant Training and Reception Centre.
This announcement followed a two-day hearing in February that revisited Heritage Victoria’s initial rejection of heritage listing last July.
Benalla Migrant Camp chairwoman Sabine Smyth said while she thought the hearing had gone well, she realised Heritage Victoria did not often revise its stance in such cases.
“I was very emotional and delighted because it was such a win achieved by a whole lot of people,” she said.
“People feel strongly about the site and I think we've been rewarded and have been listened to.”
One woman who lived at the camp as a child told Mrs Smyth her group’s work had “helped us rescue a big part of our heritage”.
“Our past has now been recognised and this is of enormous importance to refugee and displaced persons who had to abandon their original homeland,” the former resident said.
Mrs Smyth said many migrants lived in the camp for years, raising children and forming strong bonds of friendship.
“Having left their real families behind they became like family,” she said. “Other people that they met in the camp as fellow refugees became godparents and the like.”
Submissions to the Heritage Victoria hearing said the camp was significant as a centre for unsupported women and their children and an early example where childcare was provided for working mothers.
Mrs Smyth praised the research of Border historian Bruce Pennay in helping the Benalla camp’s cause.
“We had independently commissioned him to write the history of the camp, which in many ways unearthed some of those reasons why Benalla camp was so special," she said.
The chairwoman felt heritage listing would assist the development of the camp’s collection of photos and stories, which opened in 2013.
“This is a unique opportunity to do something with the exhibition that's really meaningful and I think it's just going to give us clout,” she said.
