On 26th March, Darren Arnott gave a presentation on Rowville’s Italian prisoners of war.
In 1946, some Italian prisoners of war who had been captured several years earlier in northern Africa were interned in camps around Australia and were waiting to be returned home. One Saturday evening, the commandant of the Rowville internment camp, Captain Waterston, shot and killed a prisoner, Rodolfo Bartoli, who he claimed was attempting to escape. What initially appeared to be a straightforward case of an Australian army officer carrying out his duty, soon appeared to be something else. Allegations of assaults, reckless firing of weapons, drunkenness and stolen goods began to emerge.
Darren shared his discoveries about these events, including the brutal treatment of some of the internees and a romance between the young shooting victim and the 
daughter of a local farmer.