Our History: Farmer's skills provided bounty at Berrima Internment camp

He left Bohemia, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with his American wife Edna and two young daughters and they arrived in Sydney in April 1913.

At the outbreak of war in August 1914 he was classed as an enemy alien. He was included, by mistake, among the first contingent of German mariners sent in March 1915 to the Berrima Internment Camp at the disused Gaol.

He was removed the next day. Instead of being allowed to rejoin his family in Sydney, he was placed in the main internment camp at Holsworthy. Only occasional family visits were allowed.

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Eventually, in January 1916, he and the family were sent to Bourke. The heat was intolerable for Edna with two young daughters, Carmen and Eva, and a third daughter Manon, an Australian-born infant.

No doubt moved by her plight, and representations by the American consul, the authorities granted permission for the family to move to Berrima. This was in April, almost 14 months after Machotka had, as it were, been shanghaied there by mistake.

As an internee, Friedrich had to conform to the night-time lock-up regulations but the daytime freedom allowed to the internees enabled him to be with his family and to put his agricultural skills to good use.

Their years at Berrima were the happiest they had enjoyed since arriving in Australia. They rented a house in Oxley Street and soon had many friends among the other internees and townsfolk.

Their house stood on a large area of sloping ground covered with weeds, rocks and rubbish. With the help of Carmen and Eva, Friedrich set about improving the site and, with his horticultural knowledge, transformed it into a showplace of flower and vegetable gardens.

With his involvement, the other internees established extensive gardens. They supplied the camp, almost continuously throughout the year, with a wide variety of vegetables and fruits. Any surplus was eagerly bought by the villagers.

A fourth daughter, Sylvia, was born at Berrima. The Machotka family expected their happy days to continue to the end of the war, but this was not to be.

In August 1918 the Molonglo Camp was opened at Canberra as a belated effort to ease the lot of interned families. All the Berrima families were relocated, except the Machotkas, for reasons that remain unclear.

Friedrich was taken to Holsworthy and, despite the Armistice being signed and thus raising internees' hopes of release, it was more than a year before he was allowed to rejoin his family at Berrima.

At war's end, most of those of German descent who had been interned in Australia, even if long-term residents, were deported.

Machotka appealed and, against all expectations, was one of the lucky few allowed to stay.

In November 1919, he secured an appointment as head gardener at Hopewood, near Bowral, the property of Lebbeus Horden.

The son of Sir Samuel Horden, Lebbeus had turned 18 the year before and was considered one of the wealthiest and most eligible young men in Sydney.

Hopewood was a grand Dutch Colonial style home, built in 1884 for pastoralist Ben Osbourne and his wife Lucy Throsby on an estate of 126 acres. By 1918 it had become the country residence of Lebbeus.

The Machotka family happily settled into the head gardener's cottage at Hopewood and Friedrich's agricultural skills soon earned the admiration of Lebbeus.

Unfortunately the idyll turned nasty when Lebbeus began to receive anonymous, threatening letters abusing him for employing an ex-enemy.

Even the Machotka children, attending Bowral Primary school, were made to suffer.

The family left Hopewood and returned to Berrima where, with financial help from Lebbeus, Friedrich bought land and stock. In a sad twist of fate, less than a year later, in 1921, just when the farm was taking shape, he caught a chill and died.

After burying him in Berrima cemetery, Edna returned to Los Angeles with the children.

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