[4][5] After sea trial in 1937, she was handed over to the British India Steam Navigation Company and served as a passenger liner and an educational cruise ship before seeing extensive service as a troopship throughout World War II.

She was taken over by the Royal Navy as a troopship before hostilities started, and was taking troops to the Far East when her crew heard the news of war at Malta on 3 September 1939.

After Britain declared war on Germany, the government set up aliens tribunals to distinguish Nazi sympathisers from refugees who had fled from Nazism.

In what Winston Churchill later regretted as "a deplorable and regrettable mistake",[This quote needs a citation] all Austrians and Germans, and many Italians, were suspected of being enemy agents, potentially helping to plan the invasion of Britain, and a decision was made to deport them.

In addition to the passengers were 309 poorly trained guards, mostly from the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps, as well as seven officers and the ship's crew, creating a total complement of almost twice the Dunera's capacity as a troop carrier of 1,600.

[17] The officer in charge, Major William Patrick Scott was "severely reprimanded" as was Sergeant Arthur Helliwell; RSM Charles Albert Bowles was reduced to the ranks and given a twelve-month prison sentence and then discharged from the British Army.

After leaving the Dunera the pale and emaciated refugees were transported through the night by train 750 kilometres (470 mi) west of Sydney to the rural town of Hay in southern New South Wales.

The treatment on the train was in stark contrast to the horrors of the Dunera – the men were given packages of food and fruit, and Australian soldiers offered them cigarettes.

[13] Back in Britain relatives had not at first been told what had happened to the internees, but as letters arrived from Australia there was a clamour to have them released and heated exchanges in the House of Commons.

Colonel Victor Cazalet, a Conservative MP said, on 22 August 1940: Frankly I shall not feel happy, either as an Englishman or as a supporter of this government, until this bespattered page of our history has been cleaned up and rewritten.

In 1941, as honorary secretary of the Zionist Federation of Australia and New Zealand, Benzion Patkin organised the migration from Tatura internment camp to Israel of 150 of the refugees; he subsequently published Dunera Internees (1979).

Donated by the Shire of Hay – September 1990.In 2024, the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney presented an exhibition of over 200 artworks created by Dunera internees.

The Ministry of Defence terminated Dunera's trooping charter in 1960 and she was refitted by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company at Hebburn-on-Tyne in early 1961 for her new role as an educational cruise ship.