Hyde Park Barracks
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A former convict barracks, hospital and accommodation for destitute female immigrants, courthouse and now a museum in the heart of Sydney, Australia. The main building is one of the oldest colonial-era structures in Sydney still standing. The museum exhibition deals with the convict history, the barracks’ later role in immigration and also with the tragic impact the colonialists had on the Aboriginal native population.
More background info: The construction of Hyde Park Barracks was ordered by then governor Macquarie shortly after his arrival in Sydney in 1810 as part of his efforts to bring order to what he saw as too liberal and not orderly enough. At that time, convicts who weren’t accommodated at their masters’ workplaces were free to find their own lodgings and quite a few took to drunkenness and debauchery during after-work hours. To rein in the convicts and limit their freedom, Macquarie decided it was better to accommodate them in barracks governed by strict rules.
He commissioned the building from a convict architect, Francis Greenway. The foundations were laid in 1817, the Georgian-style sandstone-and-brick three-storey building was completed in 1819 and some 600 convicts were soon moved into the premises.
At night, they slept in hammocks in densely packed dormitories, but during the day they went to work in “gangs” to whatever worksites they were allocated to (foundries, dockyards, stables, quarries, etc.). In the evening they were searched (e.g. for alcohol or other contraband), enjoyed some leisure time, then were head-counted again and sent to the dormitories.
Designed to house 700 convicts the barracks soon became overcrowded with up to twice as many occupants, and better behaved convicts were again allowed to lodge outside the barracks. If found misbehaving they would be sent back to the barracks as a form of punishment.
New governor Ralph Darling, who had arrived in Sydney in 1825, tightened up the regime to make life for the convicts more of a punishment with strict controls, the use of metal shackles and solitary confinement cells for offenders as well as corporal punishment in the form of flogging with a cat-o’-nine-tails whip, especially during the 1830s.
After convict transportations to Sydney ended in 1840, Hyde Park Barracks slowly became redundant and the last convicts left in 1848. But the building quickly found a new use: as an immigration “depot” for unaccompanied women who had just arrived in the colony.
At the time women, especially young women from poor backgrounds (e.g. famine-plagued Ireland), were targetedly encouraged to move to Australia, in part to serve as a much-needed workforce in positions like maids or cooks, but also simply in order to counter the gender imbalance of the male-dominated convict and ex-convict population. However, many such women who came to Australia in the hope of a better life quickly discovered that no accommodation or employment was actually waiting for them on arrival. So quite a few ended up sleeping on the streets.
The new immigration depot countered this by providing short-term accommodation to single women in Hyde Park Barracks which then also became a recruitment centre. Some men also used the barracks, but by far the majority of its residents were women who had arrived in Australia alone. Tens of thousands of newly arrived settlers thus went through Hyde Park Barracks with its former convict dormitories. Some stayed only a few nights, others for several months.
From 1862 to 1886, the top floor of the barracks served as an asylum for destitute and infirm women as although Sydney was a prospering colony it also had to deal with a growing poor underclass. The immigration depot remained on the lower two floors and the asylum inmates were segregated from those in the depot. The asylum increasingly housed not just destitute but also mentally ill women as well as those suffering from severe chronic illnesses such as tuberculosis or epilepsy. Many women were also there because they had been deserted by their husbands.
The asylum was to help those in need to recover and get their lives together again and find a new place in society. But some disabled and/or terminally ill inmates decided to stay in the safe asylum to “live out” their days there.
In 1886 the depot and asylum were closed and the remaining occupants moved to other locations. Instead the courts that had been expanding next door now also moved into the Hyde Park Barracks building.
In the 1970s conservation work was undertaken at Hyde Park Barracks and in the 1980s a first museum was established inside. In 1990 ownership was transferred to the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.
Then in 2019, the museum closed for a comprehensive refurbishment and upgrade. It reopened later that year. It is now run as part of the group “Museums of History NSW”, which also includes the Museum of Sydney and the Police & Justice Museum (see under Sydney).
By the way, the barracks took its name from the nearby Hyde Park, which was Sydney’s first public park, established by governor Macquarie, and indeed named after the famous park of the same name in London.
What there is to see: Before going inside it’s worth stopping to take a good look at the remarkably grand architecture of Hyde Park Barracks.
After you’ve stepped through the main gate on Queens Square into the compound, turn left, rather than straight towards the main barracks building, to find the entrance to the museum in a side building.
Here you are given your (practically compulsory) audio-guide device with headphones and instructions on how to use it. It’s quite simple. By means of sensors dotted around the exhibition, the device detects your location and automatically plays the relevant audio tracks. It’s not always 100% accurate, but OK. The audio tour is supposed to be “immersive”, using narrations by protagonists of the time (well, actors posing as such), thus making visitors feel like they’re “stepping back in time themselves”. It did not do that for me at all, but it wasn’t too overdramatized either.
At the beginning of the exhibition is an overview of all the convict-related heritage sites in Australia, including Hyde Park Barracks, Port Arthur and others.
The exhibition proper starts in the same side building with an introduction about the convict transportations including large animated projections depicting rough open ocean waters. Other projections/pictures illustrate the early days of the Sydney colony and convicts’ roles in it.
You then cross the courtyard to enter the barracks building itself. Inside is, amongst other things, a reconstruction of one of the dormitories with its densely packed rows of hammocks. On the white walls of the corridors are written in large black letters some of the aims of the convict barracks, especially “FEAR” and “CONTROL”.
In the exhibition rooms displays include models (e.g. of the barracks in its early days), archaeological finds, cat-o’-nine-tails whips and shackles and other iron restraints. At one point in the exhibition you can even sit down and try on some shackles set into the floor. Amongst the artefacts on display are, astonishingly, a number of desiccated rats! Otherwise there are personal items, pieces of clothing, bottles, work tools, and so on.
Content-wise, a large part of the exhibition is naturally about the convicts and their lives and treatment, also their types of work. But there are also sections about the subsequent use of the barracks as an “immigration depot” for single women as well as its role as an asylum for destitute, seriously ill and disabled women (see above).
One special focus of the museum is also the impact the colony of Sydney/New South Wales had on the Aboriginal traditional owners of the land, who were driven out, robbed of their livelihoods, marginalized and all too often killed.
A side section focuses on the building itself, the preservation efforts and archaeology.
Towards the end of the exhibition are several large screens standing upright with a person on the screen narrating their or some historical figure’s personal stories. All the covered categories are represented: convicts, immigrants, Aboriginals.
All in all, I can’t say the exhibition sent me into raptures, but it was better than I had anticipated in my scepticism about “immersive” exhibition designs. I had originally not even planned to visit, discounting the history of the place as lying strictly speaking outside the time frame relevant for dark tourism (see concept of DT), but then found myself with spare time and in the vicinity of the museum, so I changed my mind on the spot and went in after all (also given it was free anyway). Much of the coverage does indeed go back far, but the immigration and asylum part of its history just about enters the modern age relevant for dark tourism. The same can be said about the Aboriginal angle, which goes back to before colonialism but extends to the present day. For all that, the museum does deserve some attention by dark tourists as well after all. And it’s quite well-made (despite the “immersive” element).
Location: on the eastern side of Queens Square at the bottom end of Macquarie Street and just north of Hyde Park in the eastern part of the CBD (Central Business District) of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Google Maps locator: [-33.8695, 151.2126]
Access and costs: easy to find and free.
Details: From within the central parts of Sydney’s CBD it’s walkable. The nearest public transport options include the inner-city-loop regional trains (the same that also go to the airport – see under Sydney), either use the stop Martin Place to the north of the museum or St James to the south-west. There are also bus stops at those stations as well as one by St Mary’s Cathedral to the south of the museum, all within a few minutes’ walk.
Opening times: daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed only on Good Friday and Christmas Day.
Admission is free, but the museum recommends pre-booking tickets online in advance to secure entry.
The audio guide (also free) is available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean.
Time required: the museum website says 90 minutes, but I found myself back outside after just under an hour (because I had skipped some of the sections that didn’t interest me so much).
Combinations with other dark destinations: see under Sydney in general.
The two sites related most closely to the history of Hyde Park Barracks are Cockatoo Island (convicts) and Q Station (immigrants).
Location-wise the closest other dark-tourism-relevant attraction in Sydney is the ANZAC Memorial in the southern part of Hyde Park.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: the namesake Hyde Park is just to the south of the museum and well worth a look. At the northern end stands a statue of governor Macquarie who founded the park and commissioned the barracks. To the east of the park stands St Mary’s Cathedral.
Just to the north of the museum is another historical building dating back to Macquarie’s days that is called The Mint (aka “Rum Hospital”), and of the city’s modern-day attractions the Sydney Tower is the closest (you can see it through the windows of the barracks).
See also under Sydney in general.
