14/04/15 - Cowra - NSW

Spent the day looking at all the interesting things to see and experience in Cowra.

Started at the POW Theatre in the Cowra Visitor Information Centre. This is an audio visual presentation on the Cowra Breakout in 1944 when 100 Japanese prisoners of war staged a mass escape from the POW Camp located just out of Cowra. The presentation features a  hologram that is extremely life like,

Cowra Visitor Information centre - Cowra Breakout - POW Theatre 

Outside the Information Centre is the Cowra Rose Garden which is very well looked after and has a variety of roses on display.

Next we visited the Japanese Gardens, which provide quite a contrast to the surrounding Australian countryside.

On enetering there is the Japanese Bonsho Bell.

The gardens feature a typical Japanese cottage.

We then moved on to the POW Camp and Guard Tower where the aforementioned Cowra Breakout took place in August 1944.

The Guard Tower is a replica of the original one.

As well as the Japanese there was a contingent of Italians captured in North Africa and sent to Australia by the British.

There was also a contingent of Indonesians held here at the request of the Dutch Government, mainly dissidents who objected to Dutch colonial rule.

A bit further out of town are 2 War Cemeteries, one for Australians and one for Japanese nationals.

The Cowra Australian War Cemetery is the resting place for the four Australian soldiers killed in the Cowra Breakout and Service Personnelfrom Cowra who lost their lives in training or from illness.

The Japanese War Cemetery contains the remains of the Japanese soldiers who were killed in the Cowra Breakout and all Japanese Nationals who died on Australian soil during WWII.