People from 30 different countries were interned in Australia during the war, but the largest groups were Italian, German and Japanese. Italians not the only nationality targeted I can't imagine how shocked, stressed and financially strained my grandmother would have been. 'In Australia they had to find a visible enemy and the Italians were an easy target,' said Giuseppe's grandson, John. Speaking with Celestino's daughter Philomena I got the sense that both interned men felt indignant, heartbroken and somewhat betrayed by Australia. They sent him to Gaythorne Internment Camp at the Enoggera Barracks in Brisbane: the place he had joined the First Australian Imperial Force in 1915. Giuseppe had even fought for Australia on the Western Front during the First World War. I found that two of my great uncles, Celestino and Giuseppe, had been interned. I started asking other family members if they had experienced anything similar during the war. When I learned this, the naso culo story no longer seemed so comic. It didn't matter that many had lived in Australia for years. An atmosphere of suspicionĭuring World War II, Australian citizens born in the Axis countries found themselves categorised as 'enemy aliens', and many were interned in camps. But over the decades I started to think more deeply about it. I first heard this story when I was a teenager and loved it because of Nonno's sense of mischief. In fact, Nonno was telling the officer to stick his nose up his arse. To the officer's ears it sounded like 'nice and cool' because of my Nonno's broken English. Sweat dripping from his heaving frame, the officer shook his head, dismissed the charge and descended the hill like an overworked, out of control locomotive.Īfterwards Nonno would often see the same policeman around town and when the officer would remark: 'Nice day, isn't it?', Nonno would smile and respond: 'Naso culo.' Nonno denied this and, to prove it was nonsense, took the rather overweight policeman over paddocks of cut sugarcane and up a hill until they stood staring at a large pile of boulders, apparently arranged in a coded pattern. He'd come to investigate the claim, made by a neighbour, that Nonno was sending messages to military planes flying overhead. It went something like this: during World War II a police officer visited my Nonno on his sugarcane farm near Mount Bartle Frere in North Queensland. When I was a boy there was a story that would often do the rounds at family gatherings.

Friends and enemies ww2