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

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Students participating in A Trial Run at the Justice & Police Museum
Onsite

A Trial Run

Within the setting of a historic police station and courthouse, this program gives students the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between the law and society

Education programme at Hyde Park Barracks.
Onsite

Archaeology Underfoot

As they experience historical archaeology first hand, students learn to differentiate between the roles of historian and archaeologist

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