How Villawood Detention Centre Produced Some Of Australia’s Greatest Bands

For a long time, Villawood Detention Centre has been one of most well-known and notorious sites of indefinite detention in Australia. Less than a month ago a 42-year-old New Zealand detainee died at the centre, with uncertainty surrounding the circumstances of his death. In 2013, another death in Villawood occurred when asylum seeker Ahmad Jafari had a heart attack. It was stated at the time it took over an hour for an ambulance to arrive and he was only there on a bureaucratic mistake.

In September last year, another Villawood asylum seeker set himself on fire. In 2001, more than 46 asylum seekers temporarily escaped from the centre. Talking to Four Corners about their experience, one of them explained: “Sometimes, when you see yourself a long time — two years for nothing — Sometimes I get depression. Sometimes, I tell you, I wanted to kill myself.”

But the grim stories Villawood’s associated with nowadays are very different to the ones it used to be known for. The site the centre occupies was once the Villawood Migrant Hostel, part of a larger group of hostels built across Australia in the post-war period to deal with an influx of migrants from Europe. Unknown by many, Villawood Migrant Hostel has a strange and unique place in Australian musical history – one that says a great deal about the possibilities of welcoming refugees today.

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Villawood’s Surprising Musical History

At the age of 13, Johannes Hendricus Jacob van den Berg’s experience with music began with playing his Hofner guitar in the basement of a tenement in The Hague, Netherlands, where he lived. But just as he formed a band called The Starfighters his parents decided to move to Australia, travelling here by boat. They ended up in the Villawood Migrant Centre and in 1963, at the age of 18, van den Berg met 17-year-old fellow Dutchman Dingeman Ariaan Henry van der Sluijs. The families of both boys probably arrived under the Netherlands Australia Migration Agreement, which encouraged immigration in order to reduce housing stress following World War Two.

The pair decided on two things: they wanted to form a band following in the footsteps of The Beatles, and they were going to change their names to Harry and Dick, respectively. They became Harry Vanda and Dick Diamonde, lead guitarist and bassist of one of Australia’s most iconic bands, The Easybeats.

Other members of The Easybeats also coalesced around Villawood. Lead singer Stevie Wright arrived with his family in Melbourne from Leeds, England and lived opposite Vanda and Diamonde in the 1960s. When Wright came into the band in 1963, he brought along his friend George Young, aged 17, who became their rhythm guitarist. The Youngs – including George’s younger brothers, Malcolm and Angus — arrived from Scotland in 1962 and lived in the hostel for a time.

The band met their drummer Gordon ‘Snowy’ Fleet, also from the UK, soon after on a train and began to rehearse in the hostel’s laundry. People who lived in Villawood at the time have written on how many of the Easybeats’ early fans were migrants in the local area. Within a few years, they were taking the world by storm with hits like Friday On My Mind.

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Villawood And the Migrant Experience

But how did a Scotsman, two Dutchmen and two Englishmen end up in the Villawood Migrant Hostel? In short, Australian government policy brought them there. ‘Populate or Perish’, a Curtin government policy driven by a racial fear of Asia and isolation in the Pacific, started as a policy to encourage British people to emigrate to Australia in the years after World War Two.

When it had only limited success in attracting English-speaking migrants, the program was expanded and saw Australia inviting in non-English speaking Europeans for the first time. These people were called ‘displaced persons’ and over 1.2 million of them arrived between 1946 and 1960.

As part of ‘Populate or Perish’, migrants were provided with accommodation, unemployment benefits and English classes but were expected to work in an occupation specified by the government regardless of their skills. According to Bethan Donnelly, a historian on the Villawood area, the migrant hostels built around the country at the time were not welcoming places.

“The hostel experience in post-war Australia must be recognised as a raw introduction to Australian society and an intensely trying period in the lives of many new Australians because the hostel could never be a home,” Donnelly says. “On one occasion, a woman was held up and brutally bashed opposite the [Villawood] camp kitchen, demonstrating the undercurrent of malicious violence at Villawood.”

But despite all this, The Easybeats were able to form, rehearse and ultimately become Australia’s biggest ‘60s pop export. Their career was short-lived, but their rapid rise to fame inspired George’s younger brothers Angus and Malcolm Young to form AC/DC in 1973. George Young and Harry Vanda went on to produce AC/DC’s first six albums.

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So What Happened?

AC/DC and The Easybeats count among Australia’s most successful and influential bands to this day, but the idea of similar stories coming out of modern-day Villawood Detention Centre seems far-fetched. If you visit Villawood today, semi-hidden in industrial parkland, you could easily think you’re anywhere.

But what always stands out is the rusty sign for the Smith’s Family depot on the walk from Leightonfield Station to the centre with the charity’s motto: “Everyone’s family.” This changed a long time ago for Villawood.

In 1976, the same year AC/DC released High Voltage in the USA, the Villawood Migrant Hostel began to separately hold people who were going to be deported back to their home country. This new area was named the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, and in 1984, the original hostel closed down. In 1992, mandatory detention was introduced under the Migration Amendment Act by the Keating government, and mandatory detention has been in place ever since.

Today Villawood Detention Centre is a very different place from what it once was. If you visit today, you won’t see any future acts trying to make it big — just men and women held against their will indefinitely, struggling to see a future in Australia.