Yet this latterday image of the town of some 4400, nestled in the Goulburn Valley, tells nothing of its storied past,  or why it holds a special place in the hearts of so many of German descent.

At the Tatura Cemetery, the answer is found in private corner hedged by native bushes and sugar gums. Pass through the gate, formed by a canopy supported by columns, and before you is an unmistakable scene of a war cemetery: a rectangle of emerald lawn, rows of identical headstones and a large white cross towards the back.

This is Australia's German War Cemetery, the final resting place of 250 Germans: 119 civilian internees from World War I and 59 from World War II, including 11 prisoners of war. The 59 include those who died not far from here, in camps near Tatura, and others from camps around Australia whose remains were brought here when the cemetery opened in 1958.

They include a sailor from the Kormoran, the German raider that sank HMAS Sydney in 1941. There are four "enemy alien" internees brought to Australia in inhumane conditions aboard the Dunera. And several Templers, a breakaway religious community that had settled in Palestine, who were rounded up when the war began and shipped to Australia.

An honoured place for Australia's Germans, it has been little known outside that community – until now.

The importance of Australia's oldest foreign war cemetery has now been formally recognised, having just been placed on Victoria's Heritage Register, meeting the criteria of having historical and social significance for the state.

Of course, for those who already knew the story of the cemetery, it was always significant. The existence of the cemetery and why it is located in these Goulburn Valley fields is a remarkable story of wartime Australia.

During World War II, the paddocks around Tatura were home to four civilian internee camps and three POW camps - including a squatter's mansion for German officers. The area was selected for its remoteness from the main centres of population.

Arthur and Lurline Knee, 90 and 88, know this story better than most. In 1988, they were members of the local historical society which opened a museum in the town in three tiny rooms that were the century-old offices of the irrigation trust.

It was only ever going to have two themes: the history of the Rodney Shire, and the Goulburn Valley irrigation system. Within weeks of opening, a visitor arrived and asked about the camps – she and her family had lived there for six years.

Discovering the story of life in the camps

And so the piecing together of the story began, to the point where the three tiny rooms have expanded several times over. The Knees were appointed researchers and the museum on Hogan Street now houses a fascinating collection of material that tells the story of life in the camps.

There are puppets made out of the wooden crates that carried fruit and vegetables; drawings and paintings of the camps; diaries and letters that record life behind the camp fences,  showing how a sense of community flourished despite their incarceration.

As Arthur makes the tea and organises sandwiches, Lurline runs though a brief history of the camps, which held more than 8500 people. "I'm telling you this so you'll know what an extraordinary story it is," she says.

The story divides into two parts: the POWs and the civilian internees. Many of the POWs came from the North African theatres of war. But they also included the crew of the Kormoran and its captain, Theodor Detmers.

In November, 1941, the Kormoran engaged the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney off the Western Australian coast. The battle at close range saw the Kormoran sink the Sydney, with the loss of all the crew of 645.  On the Kormoran, which was scuttled, 317 of the 399 crew were rescued and taken POW.

Among them was Erich Meyer. Back at the cemetery, Arthur Knee shows us the sailor's headstone and explains that before the battle, the sailor was suffering from pleurisy. He made it to land but would die in Fremantle Hospital, and he was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery. The legend, says Arthur, is that his grave was tended by the mother of one of the Sydney crew who died.

Captain Detmers would also end up at Tatura, at the Dhurringile Mansion, which is now part of the HM Prison Dhurringile, a minimum security prison on the road into town from Melbourne.

The latter appears to have been the case in early 1945, when the officers, led by Detmers, implemented an escape plan. They dug a tunnel, its entrance hidden by a crockery cabinet, which ran underneath the mansion and grounds and out beyond the security fence.

On the night of January 10, 1945, some 20 German officers, led by Detmers, made good their escape, splitting up and heading in different directions. Over the course of the next week, most were rounded up.

Detmers and Luftwaffe officer Helmutt Bertram were among the last to be caught. Detmers had drawn a map of the east coast of Australia, and the pair appeared to be heading to Sydney. They were captured at Tallygaroopna, about 30 kilometres north of Shepparton.

Hungry, the pair decided they would attempt to buy some food. As The Argus reported, the storekeeper recognised the men – described as the ringleaders of the Nazi escape – from photographs published in the press.

"Both men were wearing civilian clothes and had apparently been without food for some time," the report said. "They were ravenous when they arrived at the police station, and ate a loaf of bread and a pound of cheese."

Another version of their capture has been passed down to the Knees, from one of the police officers who arrested the men. According to Arthur, the shopkeeper told police when he rang them:  "There's a fella just come in here. He speaks too gooder English to be an Australian – you better come."

The family camps

The second part of the camp story involves the civilian internees in the so-called "family camps", where parents raised their families and attempted to make life as normal as possible. A rich community life developed.

This included setting up schools. A photo in the Australian War Memorial collection shows Mrs Gudrun Heide's class in March, 1945, the children beaming, some wearing lederhosen.

One of compelling stories involves the Templers, a German Protestant breakaway group, which settled in Palestine in the 1800s after being expelled from the church. Early in World War Two, they were rounded up by British officials  with 665 sent to Australia, and ending up in the Tatura camps.

Many Templers decided to make their home in Australia after the war. Among them was the Scheerle family, which spent more than five years inside Camp Three.

The eldest of five Scheerle children, Ruth, now 88,  recalls how the barbed wire went up around their Templer village of Wilhelma when war broke out. Two years later they were told: "Pack your things. We're going to take you away."

Ruth says they weren't told where they were headed. Their end destination would be Tatura, via Fremantle and Sydney. As soon as they arrived, the Templer families got organised, reforming their community, starting classes for their children with two days.

Ruth recalls the kindness of the Australian garrison. The food was good, and the men were allowed outside the security fence to grow vegetables.

At her Templer retirement home unit in suburban Melbourne, which she shares with husband Felix,  Ruth spreads out the reminders of camp life she has kept: small inlaid wooden boxes; a needlework purse she made with her initials embroidered on the front. She opens a small round tin with a small swastika on the front – chocolate from the German Red Cross. It now contains trinkets that adorned small Christmas trees, also sent by the Red Cross.

Ruth entered the Camp 3 a teenager and left a young woman. What did she feel on that day? '"I wasn't all that happy," she recalls. "We left all these friends behind."

For a short while, the camps also held internees who made the journey on the hell-ship Dunera. After the fall of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk, the British Government rounded up thousands of "enemy aliens". Canada and Australia agreed to take them. The 2500 on the Dunera included about 250 Nazis and 200 Italian fascists, but most were anti-fascist and two thirds were Jews.

They were treated appallingly by some of the British guards. An official apology was made in 1940 and the internees were released. About 900 stayed in Australia, and many served with Australian forces.

The camps were a dominant part of life in the area, yet their very physical separation meant that, for many locals, knowledge about them was scant.

Lurline was a teenager growing up Shepparton and didn't know much about the camps, although in part this might have been because she was a typical teenager. "When you're 14 or 15, you're pretty interested in yourself and your own surroundings," she says.

She recalls that though people were aware of the POWs, the existence of the family camps wasn't widely known. Even then, Lurline recalls people getting a shock when it became known later in the war that Dhurringile held 150 German officers.

Even after the war, the camps remained a little-known story. Arthur, who grew up in Shepparton, became the shire engineer. In 1950, he remembers going out with the shire foreman to look for gravel.

"We'll go and have a look at one of the women's camps," the foreman suggested.

"What's this women's camp?" Arthur said.

The foreman: "Oh, there were women interned here."

"I didn't know anything about it," says Arthur.

As the 1950s progressed, the one-time warring nations got on with the peace, which included due and proper recognition of those who had died on foreign soil, and were buried in local cemeteries.

The Australian War Graves Commission, working with German officials, moved to establish the cemetery, excising a corner of the Tatura Cemetery. Here, in 1961, the remains of those Germans who had died in the camps would be reburied – first those from World War II then from World War I.

It was the first foreign war cemetery in Australia, and others would be established near other camps, such as the Japanese war cemetery at Cowra, which holds the remains of those killed in the Cowra breakout of August, 1944.

The Tatura cemetery was opened 1958 by the West German ambassador Dr Hans Muhlenfeld, with 1000 people gathered for the ceremony.

Since then, the cemetery has been the focus of an annual pilgrimage. In November, Germans mark Volkstrauertag, people's day of mourning, when the victims of war are remembered.

Until recent times, the ceremony was held at the cemetery each year, but now it alternates with Melbourne, as those connected with the camps age and the journey becomes more difficult. This year, it returns to Tatura.

Thanks to the work of Lurline and Arthur Knee, that sense of remembrance is maintained throughout the year.  "The children come back and they bring their children," says Lurline. "We've got so many stories."