Towns in Australia

Exploring Australia, town by town

Tatura VIC

Tatura

Postcode: 3616

Tatura is a town 17 km west-south-west of Shepparton in Victoria, Australia. At the 2001 census, Tatura had a population of 2,924. Attractions include the Cussen Park wetlands and the Wartime Camps and Irrigation Museum. It is home to Tatura Milk Industries, Goulburn-Murray Water’s head office and the Tatura Research and Extension Centre of the Victorian Department of Primary Industry.

The town is associated with the water wheel or dethridge wheel, a device used to measure the amount of irrigation water released from a channel to a farmer’s property.

The Tatura Show is held in March and International Dairy Week (which is the second largest dairy show in the Southern Hemisphere) in January each year. The Taste of Tatura Food and Wine Festival is held on the first Sunday in March.

In 1943 Major Jullian Leyton arrived from England, on a mission. Leyton, a Jew like many of the ‘Dunera Boys’, managed to secure the release of many of them if they enlisted in the British or Australian Army. At the end of the war all of the Dunera Boys were released.

In 1941, German Templers were shipped from Palestine and interned for the duration of WWII, which led to the establishment of the Temple Society Australia.

The crew of the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran were also interned following the Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran.

351 German civilians and servicemen who died during internment (WWI and WWII) are buried in the Tatura German Military Cemetery.