POW picking tomatoes, Yanco, NSW

Depicts Italian Prisoners-of-War picking tomatoes form 80 acres grown for seed at Riverina Welfare Farm, Yanco, New South Wales. In 1942 the Riverina Welfare farm became POW Camp 15 which held over 700 Italian prisoners of war and was managed by the Department of Agriculture. The prisoners grew vegetables to assist Allied war efforts. Ralph Malcolm Warner was appointed Official War Artist in 1943, covering the activities of the RAAF in Canada, United States and the Bahamas. His first mission was in Papua New Guinea recording Australian operation against the Japanese. In 1945 Warner continued to work as a war artist recording civil and industrial war efforts and food production in areas of New South Wales and Victoria. After the war he returned to commercial art, designing posters, murals and postage stamps and illustrating books.