Hyde Park Barracks
Convict Sydney
Convict punishment: the treadmill
As a punishment, convicts were made to step continuously on treadmills to power wheels that ground grain
Convict Sydney
Back to business
From 1822, with the British government keen to cut costs and encourage pastoral expansion, part three sees the removal of convicts from town.
Remembering the Great Irish Famine
The memorial was officially unveiled on 28 August 1999 by Governor-General Sir William Deane
Onsite
Home: convicts, migrants and First Peoples
What was it like to be a convict living at Hyde Park Barracks?
Coming soon
Featured exhibition
Murmurations
Artists Tony Albert and Angela Tiatia have teamed up with creatives Lille Madden and Alina Olivares-Panucci
Hope 1848–1886
In 1848 the Hyde Park Barracks became an immigration depot and hiring office for unaccompanied women newly arrived in Sydney
Convict Sydney
Bigge inquiry
The Bigge Inquiry (1819–23) made recommendations to reshape the colony and make transportation ‘a fate to dread’.
Convict Sydney
1801 - Day in the life of a convict
In the young colony, there was no prisoner’s barrack - the bush and sea were the walls of the convicts’ prison
