Australian troops of the 3rd Motor Brigade moved into the Rowville Military Camp on 18 May 1942. The camp was sited on a 109 hectare area north of the present Timbertop Drive. The troops were to be used as a strategic reserve in the event of a Japanese invasion in the Westernport region. When the likelihood of such an event passed, the soldiers were moved out in September 1942 and they were replaced by American troops. When the Americans went off to the Pacific war zones their places in the camp were taken in late 1944 by Italian Prisoners of War who had been captured in North Africa.
By June 1945, the number of prisoners had grown to about three hundred and the role of the camp was changing to that of a staging camp. This meant that all Italian prisoners being moved from camp to camp or onto farms as labourers were processed here in Rowville. A total of two thousand six hundred prisoners passed through the Rowville camp before the last of the prisoners were repatriated to Italy in 1946.