Cowra (pop. 8,254) is a town in the Lachlan Valley in west-central New South Wales, Australia. It is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Sydney. Farmers in the surrounding district raise sheep and cattle and grow wheat and vegetables. Cowra is an Australian Aboriginal name meaning rocks. The first white settlers were probably Arthur Ranken and James Sloan, who moved to the Cowra district from Bathurst in 1831.
During World War II (1939-1945), a prisoner-of-war camp was established at Cowra. On Aug. 5, 1944, the camp’s 1,104 Japanese prisoners attempted a mass escape that came to be known as the Cowra Breakout. In the action that followed, 231 Japanese prisoners and four Australian soldiers were killed. The dead Japanese were buried at a nearby Japanese war cemetery. In 1978, a Japanese garden and cultural center were built at Cowra as a symbol of the friendship and goodwill between Cowra and postwar Japan.
