Like many of his generation, he knew how to handle himself. He could live off the land if he needed to. He wasn’t afraid to tell the authorities what he thought of them. And he was more than happy to “shoot through” from the humdrum responsibilities of working life if he thought there was an adventure to be had.

He knew how to take a punch. And he knew how to throw one.

In short, Frank Bungardy would have made a great soldier.

But when the conflagration that became World War I broke out in August 1914, Australia declared war on Frank Bungardy because, 31 years earlier, he had been born Franz von Bungardy, in Germany.

Not surprisingly, when the country he loved turned against him, Bungardy put up a fight.

He became one of almost 7000 Germans who were interned – effectively made prisoners of war – in Australia during the war. He was to suffer in the “concentration camp” at Torrens Island, in the Port River estuary during much of 1915.

The little-known story of the camp – and the hellish conditions endured by men who had come to Australia in the hope of starting a new life – is being told in a new exhibition at the Migration Museum of South Australia. It’s a story made all the more fascinating because of the letters, diaries and legal testimony of prisoner 3818 – Frank Bungardy.

Not much is known of Bungandy’s early life — much of what we know comes from a letter he wrote outlining his experiences as an intern.

Bungardy was born in Hagen, in the state of Westphalia, around 1883. He left at 14 “because I had chosen a seaman’s life”.

He made his way to the port of Hamburg and found a job as a deckhand on a German mail boat. But he found life on the high seas “not to be all beer and skittles”, so he jumped ship the first chance he got, in the city of Philadelphia.

It seems that in the US, he began his lifelong love affair with boxing. It was to prove a blessing and a curse.

After six months working in a shipyard, he returned to sea and eventually arrived on a grain ship, in Wallaroo.

Again he jumped ship, hiding in the bush until the vessel had sailed. He was soon taken in by a local couple and got a job in the smelters. The year was 1901.

Bungardy became a boxing phenomenon. A local newspaper report from 1904 claims he had had 78 fights, and never once been knocked out. The article states he had fought in North America, South America, England and Australia and was known as “The Iron Man”. He was also known as “The Iron German”, “Bungardy the Bruiser” and, later, fighting out of Broken Hill, “The Mine”. To his mates, he was simply known as “Bun”.

But he was more than just a boxer – he was a showman. In 1903, at the Port Adelaide town hall, he gave an “exhibition of strength” by “lifting two men with his teeth and carrying them around the stage”.

Supporting himself with his head and heels on two chairs, he allowed a 250 rock to be placed on his chest before it was smashed with sledgehammers.

In 1909, it seemed the bug for adventure bit again, and he made his way to London and Hamburg, returning to Australia via Canada and South America.

On his return, things started to change for Frank Burgandy. Three days after his return, he married Ida Klopp. He also got a job painting

But it was boxing where he made his name. In a letter to the editor in the Kadina and Wallaroo Times in 1911, Bungardy responded to a society matron who had blamed the sport for the poor attendance at church.

Bungardy didn’t miss his mark in his response.

“I implore all the young gentlemen to learn the noble art of boxing,” he wrote. “It might be useful in time of need, especially if they should have the misfortune to marry ladies with the opinion that they know more than the stronger sex.”

He signed off “Frank Bungardy, professional pugilist”.

The Australian-born Ida bore Frank two children – Delores and then Muriel.

Bungardy won some big purses – the greatest being £21 for a victory over “Yank” Nathan at the grandly named National Arena, in Adelaide.

And he wasn’t afraid to spend his money. Dressed up like a dandy, he and Ida were guaranteed to turn heads at the local dances in Port Adelaide and Semaphore.

But all was not rosy in the Bungardy household.

In November 1911, he was in the Adelaide Police Court, after Ida claimed £1 a week in maintenance from Frank, who had allegedly deserted her and Delores in October.

The Advertiser reported that Bungardy “had, in this instance, shown he could bruise his wife’s feelings”.

“The defendant was a prosperous man in his business. Besides his trade as a prize-fighter, he is an excellent painter, and in a position to pay the maintenance.”

Ida had been forced to move back in with her mother, who had 13 other children, and Ida’s counsel, M. V. de P Gillen, claimed Bungardy had written taunts to his wife.

“If you think I am broke, you are mistaken. I spend my savings now; money you never knew of,” Bungardy wrote.

For his part, Bungardy claimed Ida’s parents had forced him to marry shortly after he returned to Australia.

“He had tried to make her happy,” The Advertiser reported. “He had given her practically all his money. He had to mend his own clothes and sew on buttons.

“Soon, however, she got ‘nagging’ him for more money.

“One week, she spent about £4 and was then in debt. That is why he left her.”

There was also a note of scandal in the proceedings, with Gillen mentioning a letter Ida had found, allegedly written by Bungardy to a “Dear Bessie”.

“It is the most indecent letter I have ever seen in my life,” Gillen said. “Aren’t you keeping another woman in Halifax St?”

“No,” Bungardy replied. “I wouldn’t disgrace my child.”

Bungardy claimed he had written the indecent letter “just to catch my wife”.

However, the Bungardys managed to reconcile and, in 1913, the family relocated to Broken Hill after he secured a job in the British Mine.

When war broke out in August 1914, Bungardy, along with other Australian Germans, was forced to report weekly to the local police station.

He made no secret that he considered himself Australian.

“Owing (to) me being married to an Australian lady, the father of two Australian-born children, also me arriving here as a youth, made me think I had lost my European rights.”

He was mistaken. And, on January 1, 1915, the war came to Broken Hill.

Two camel drivers attacked a picnic train, flying an Ottoman flag as they fired their rifles into packed carriages. Four people died and seven were wounded in what became known as the Battle of Broken Hill.

Rumours spread that local Germans had put the Turks up to it.

And so, on January 4, 1915, a Broken Hill constable went to the mine and placed Bungardy under arrest, saying he should consider himself a prisoner of war.

He was given half an hour to pack his things and say goodbye to his family.

“Heavy-hearted in (the) charge of a detective, I left my home, a weeping wife and my weeping children bound for the railway station to catch the Adelaide express.”

Bungardy’s PoW papers list his distinguishing features as “tattooed both arms, scar under side of right knee, cauliflower ear”.

He and other prisoners were soon transferred to Torrens Island – a “concentration camp”, he described it as, next to the quarantine station.

It was the worst possible location for a camp. Barely above sea level, windswept, and a haven only for flies and mosquitoes, the camp was a scandal waiting to happen.

As soon as the prisoners arrived, the guards began abusing them, but the fiery Bungardy bit his lip.

“The calling of the most objectionable names in the English dictionary did not suit me,” he wrote in his diary. “If I been a free man, the honour of my dear mother would have compelled me to strike this man dead.”

Bungardy was assigned a small tent along with six other men, where they “lay huddled together like pigs in a sty”.

The Hague convention had ruled that PoWs should receive the same rations as soldiers — but by Frank’s calculations “we did not get it half”.

“We considered ourselves ‘guests of a very poor government’,” he wrote.

The men built their own kitchen and toilets, collected their own firewood (denuding the island in the process) and made their own fun. They started an athletic club and a soccer club. They celebrated the Kaiser’s birthday with a curious mix of parades and two-up. They made spiked-helmets out of kerosene tins so they could look the part.

But there was soon trouble.

Troublemakers – and that could be men who had been singing, collecting scrap to build facilities or, like Bungardy, had gone to the latrines without permission – were locked in an open barbed-wire pen exposed to the elements.

Guards threw cold water over the group because they would not shut up. A boy of 19 was handcuffed to a telegraph pole until he collapsed for lighting a cigarette.

One inmate was bayoneted in the leg. Shots were heard. A rumour went around that the camp’s commander, Captain G. E. Hawkes, “is going mad again”.

Bungardy spent two weeks in the barbed-wire enclosure, saying later he would rather spend two weeks in a tomb.

Soaked to the skin, inmates tried to dry clothes by hanging them on the barbed wire. Guards used the makeshift clotheslines for bayonet practice.

But it wasn’t just Germans who were interned. The camp boasted a Swede, a Dane and a Serbian. Many inmates had Australian children fighting at Gallipoli. One father of five had arrived in Australia aged two. He spoke no German.

In fact, Bungardy’s brother-in-law, Arthur Klopp, who was also of German extraction, was killed at Lone Pine while Frank shivered at Torrens Island.

One night the Swede, whose surname was Hollman, and another inmate escaped.

Quickly recaptured, they were chained to a tree and, in front of all the prisoners and soldiers, given 20 lashes with the cat o’ nine tails.

“After the first few lashes given, us hearing the yelling and the howling of the poor victim and the soldiers singing out ‘give it to him’, drove us nearly to mutiny,” Bungardy wrote.

Afterwards, one of the prisoners remarked to a guard “Allright you Australian B. We meet again, after the war, men to men.”

Instantly, the prisoner was bailed up, and at the point of a bayonet, prodded to the comandant’s office. He returned bleeding profusely.

Six weeks later, a major was on an inspection tour of the camp. An inmate stepped forward with photos of the floggings and the stab wounds, and asked to speak to the major. Despite Captain Hawkes’ objections, the superior officer was appalled at what he had been shown and vowed to undertake an investigation.

“This is not British justice,” the major said.

An inquiry eventually stripped the cruel Captain Hawkes of his commission.

In August, the order came for the detainees to pack up and prepare for transfer to a new camp. The prisoners were delighted – the new camp could hardly be any worse than Torrens Island – but it meant travelling hundreds of kilometres to another location.

They journeyed to their new home at Holsworthy, west of Sydney, via Melbourne, and on the way had a bizarre encounter on a train with a group of AIF reinforcements.

Like a game of charades, the soldiers began making hand signals at the prisoners. “Some did the sign to cut our throats. Others lynching. Still others, to gouge our eyes out,” Bungardy wrote. “Us prisoners mimicking back like getting shot, bayoneted, returning blind or minus one arm or leg.”

But now, Bungardy decided to cut short his time in captivity. Despite being told they would be fired upon if they tried to escape, he had made up his mind to “make a bold dash for liberty”.

About 150 miles from their destination, near Moss Vale, in the NSW Southern Highlands, Bungardy excused himself to go to the toilet.

He quickly lowered the window, dragged himself through until he was standing on the footboard on the outside of the train, and leapt to freedom.

Over the next few days, Bungardy made his way to Sydney, passing as a swagman and relying on the kindness of strangers. Over the previous nine months he has “lost all faith in Australians”, but now they gave him shelter, directions and food.

Once, a trooper stopped him and asked who he was. Bungardy said he was a Swede from a local building site.

“The trooper informed me that I resembled very much a German which had escaped during transit from Melbourne to Sydney,” Bungardy wrote.

Sharing a ride with a truck driver, Bungardy spun a yarn that he was a Russian, had tried to enlist but had been rejected.

“Never mind, you have showed you did not suffer with cold feet,” the driver said, “(Which) of course meant you were not afraid to fight.”

In his diary, Bungardy gave an insight into his thoughts on the war.

“He were right, I like to fight, if there is a big gate,” he wrote.

“But when it comes to fight with bullets, worker against worker …

“For I have nothing to defend, but my little homestead and my family.”

While on the run, Bungardy sent a letter to the US consul in Sydney, complaining about the treatment of prisoners on Torrens Island. It included photos taken by fellow inmate Paul Dubotzki.

Bungardy spent three weeks of freedom in Sydney, and he made the most of it.

He looked up a friend he could trust and, in company of his friend’s wife, they hit the town. The wife pretended to be with Frank, so he didn’t attract suspicion.

Burgandy also befriended a lighthorseman who had deserted. By borrowing his uniform, Bungardy had the run of the city. But it couldn’t last forever.

He took a train to Moss Vale, so he could meet up with a boundary rider who had helped him shortly after his escape. He ducked into the local post office to send his mate a telegram but a constable walked in. He immediately recognised Bungardy in Broken Hill before the war – and the jig was up.

Holsworthy couldn’t have been more different to Torrens Island.

The men slept in tents, but were building a permanent camp. They were interred with German sailors – captured from merchant ships and the notorious raider Emden – and soldiers captured in the early fighting in New Guinea. They were more organised and disciplined, and the men grew vegetables. Some had pet dogs.As well, they had concerts every evening.

They were paid, although much of that was deducted by the authorities so they could buy provisions.

Bungardy set up a self-defence school. Eventually, they would have a boxing ring and equipment.

Regardless of the improved conditions, Bungardy was still angry. The prisoners were put to work constructing the camp, and despite the pay Burgandy considered it a contravention of The Hague convention.

It was no holiday camp. One inmate, a man named Dieteman, was shot in the leg by a sergeant for refusing to work. The prisoners called a general strike. An officer, a Captain Schmidt, was dragged off into the bush and a volley of shots rang out. Believing he had been executed, most of the prisoners returned to work.

Only later did they discover the “execution” had been a ruse.

Burgandy constantly railed against the injustice of it all, risking the censors’ ire whenever he wrote to Ida and “my little Bolsheviks”. He was overcome with bitterness and laughed at tales of Australian PoWs suffering in Germany or Turkey. He had grown to hate the country he once loved.

Many of the inmates may have considered themselves proud Australians when war broke out, but years of segregation, isolation and abuse had made them change their allegiance back to their homeland.

“One thing Ida, I have found out since 1914 that I have lived in a fool’s paradise,” he wrote.

Eventually, on November 11, 1918, the war came to an end, but Bungardy – like thousands of others – was still being kept captive. It wasn’t until February that the Federal Government appointed a committee to look at the release of prisoners.

Bungardy wrote letters to inquiries looking into the conditions in the camps and gave evidence, but his outspokenness and obvious bitterness was hurting his cause.

When the list of 6000 prisoners to be deported back to Germany was released, his name was on it. His protestscounted for nothing. He returned to the country of his childhood.

He also returned to what he knew best – boxing.

The noble English sport had been banned by the Kaiser, but was embraced by the Weimar Republic. Bungardy had a wealth of experience but was getting on in age.

He fought in Berlin, Vienna, Dusseldorf and Bremen, eking out a living the best way he knew. He lost most of his German bouts but threw himself into training the next generation of German boxers.

Ironically, the boxer promoted as “The Iron German” in Australia was known as “The Australian” in Germany.

And all the while, he must have longed to see Ida and daughters Delores and Muriel once again.

But it was a dream that was never realised. One day, in 1923, the 40-year-old, undoubtably slowing down but still trusting in his famous iron jaw, was knocked out during a fight in Kiel, Germany.

Bungardy was fighting a boxer called Dittmar. In the 10th round, the man who knew how to take a punch, who had copped more than his share and got back up every time, was knocked out.

He never woke up. The end of an extraordinary life.