Hyde Park Barracks
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
40,000 women and the dormitory experience
It’s well known that 2253 Irish orphan girls were some of the first occupants of Sydney’s Female Immigration Depot, but they were only just the beginning of the women’s story at Hyde Park Barracks
Convict Sydney
A day in the life of a convict - 1844
Fraying at the edges, these were the Barracks’ darkest days with only the worst convicts remaining
A lighter shade of drab
In this video, as specialist painter Adam John Christian Seur goes about his work, curator Gary Crockett explains the origin of drab
Convict Sydney
A world of pain
The combined aims of the assignment system, from 1826 onwards, were to equip farmers with cheap convict labour, to disperse convicts away from towns (and other convicts) and to keep an eye on each worker’s whereabouts and treatment
Activity: make your own convict love token
Learn about convict love tokens and some of the convicts at the Hyde Parks Barracks
An alternate world: Q&A with Daniel Crooks
Ambiguous, disorientating and beguiling, Daniel Crooks’s ambitious video installation brings together new technology and complex post-production processes to create a compelling visual experience that subverts our understanding of time
Onsite
Archaeology Underfoot
As they experience historical archaeology first hand, students learn to differentiate between the roles of historian and archaeologist