History Adventures at the Barracks

Vacation Care Program

Join us for a one-of-a-kind museum experience, where kids will discover what life was for the convicts at the Hyde Park Barracks in a day of fun-filled, hands-on activities!

The children will have to bring all their excitement, because there is much for them to do.

Love Token Making

Love tokens are handmade coins that represent the heartbreak of convicts being separated from family and friends. In this activity, children use small mallets and letter presses to make their own love tokens on a large disk, inspired by someone special in their lives.

Bricklaying

One of the main jobs that convicts staying at the barracks would have had to do was bricklaying. After being issued with convict shirts marked with the broad arrow, the group will be put to work in a brick laying gang, creating a room under the watchful eye of their overseer.

Archaeological Dig

Using brushes, sieves and spades, uncover artefacts from dig pits, just as archaeologists did at the Hyde Park Barracks.

Museum Tour and Barracks

Enter the Hyde Park Barracks and put yourselves in the footsteps of the convicts who walked these same halls 200 years ago. The groups will explore artefacts left behind by the barracks original inhabitants, and may even get a chance to rest inside the convict hammocks!

Queens Square, Macquarie Street Sydney NSW 2000

Hyde Park Barracks

Queens Square, Macquarie Street Sydney NSW 2000
  • Wheelchair accessible
Cost (GST free)
From $282 for up to 20 students

See page for cost scale details

Duration
90 minutes
Session offered
Monday to Friday

During school holidays

Maximum students
80 per session
Supervision ratios

1 staff member required per 20 students

Supervisors/Staff Members are free. At least 1 Adult supervisor is required per 20 students

Browse all
Student and carer looking at convict bricks on wheelchair tray.  Cayn assisting.
Onsite

Making Connections accessible program

Onsite program at the Hyde Park Barracks for primary and secondary school students with access requirements

Students sitting on the hillside, creating a watercolour painting of the view towards the Blue Mountains.
Onsite

A Colonial Eye

Students investigate the role of artists during the early colonial period and consider how they contributed to the development of the colony

Onsite

Bailed Up!

Students explore the impact of the gold rush on law and order in the colony of NSW, and of bushrangers on the Australian identity

Students wearing dress up costumes and laughing in the nursery.
Onsite

Child's Play

Students learn about what it was like to live at Vaucluse House for the wealthy family of William Charles and Sarah Wentworth, with their ten children and many servants

Learning program at Elizabeth Farm
Onsite

Colonial Life at Elizabeth Farm

As they explore the Macarthur family home, which dates from 1793, students learn about the lives of the family and their convict servants and the impact of colonisation on the traditional owners of the Parramatta area

Children recreating a solitary confinement cell with foam bricks
Onsite

Convict Life at the Barracks

What was it like to be a convict living at the Hyde Park Barracks?

A student feeds the chickens as part of the Early to Rise program at Rouse Hill Estate
Onsite

Early to Rise

This Stage 1 History program gives students the opportunity to explore the working areas of the former farm, and investigate what life would have been like for children living there 120 years ago

Looking towards small cottage across paddocks.
Onsite

Expanding the Colony

Students explore the former farm and examine a range of sources to learn about the expansion of NSW in the 19th century and investigate its impacts on the environment, the people of the Boorooberongal clan and the colonisers

Two girls in school uniform making string in exhibition space with other students behind.
Onsite

Garuwanga Gurad (stories that belong to Country)

During this program at Museum of Sydney, on the site of first Government House, students have a unique opportunity to explore links between Indigenous and European histories, cultures and perspectives in the expanding Sydney colony of the 1800

Two girls dressed in costume in large dormitory style room.
Onsite

Home: Convicts, Migrants and First Peoples

What was it like to be a convict living at the Hyde Park Barracks?