Hyde Park Barrack in Sydney

Hyde Park Barrack The Hyde Park Barracks is one of 11 convict sites included on the UNESCO World Heritage list. This listing recognises the role these sites played in the transportation of British criminals to the Australian colonies in the 18th and 19th centuries. Together, they controlled the convict labour force that helped to build modern Australia; in doing so, they enabled the brutal dispossession of Aboriginal peoples The Hyde Park Barracks opened in 1819 as a dormitory for male convicts and, from 1830, administered the convict system until transportation to New South Wales ceased a decade later. In 1848, the building was repurposed as a female immigration depot. It later also served as an asylum for poor, sick and homeless women before becoming a complex of courts and government offices, and finally, in 1984, a museum The Hyde Park Barracks now tells the story of the convicts, immigrant women and asylum inmates whose lives it shaped. On your tour today you will hear their stories, sometimes in their own words, sometimes fictionalised, but always reflecting real people and situations