104. The Hyde Park Barracks Museum

It seems in Sydney they can make almost anything into a museum. This particular one is a testament to early Sydney life. The Barracks building in which the museum is now housed was built in 1816 and was originally used to hold male convicts. Later it housed women and was also used as a courthouse. The building is actually quite small and when you consider that it used to hold 600 people then the dimensions become quite shocking. Although it looks fairly large from the outside the later picture of the hammocks will give you an idea as to how difficult it must have been to live there - and that doesn't even include the beatings from the prison guards.

When you walk through the gates of the grounds you are greeted with the attractive façade of the Barracks. Inside there are three floors dedicated to the life and times of those people who lived there. The first floor talks about the building itself and shows you the various features of the structure and the various masonry works that have taken place over the years. They have several rooms with cut-away sections of the walls and floors so that you can see the original designs and fittings.

Further down the corridor from this is 2 galleries showing some of the items from the era. There is convicts clothing, personal belongings, guard outfits, cat o’ nine tails and a whole host of stories and writings from the early nineteenth century. It’s very well laid out and at first glance it looks like there is not a great deal in either of the rooms but beware, there is a lot of reading to be done if you are interested.

The second floor talks about other people of the age including the women that were involved with the building and the later female residents of the Barracks. This floor also has the best feature of the museum which is an interactive database of thousands of convicts that were sent to Australia. You can search through the names of your relatives and see if your great, great, great grandfather was sent to Oz for buying stolen glass or stealing eggs or using confiscated flour to bake his bread with!!! I found a few possibles from both my Mum’s line and Isla’s Mum’s line. I wonder how those families are doing now in Australia.


The top floor was really quite eerie. It mainly focused on the prison aspect showing you how the people were crammed into the hammocks and how they guards kept and eye on them all. There is also a huge open room with some life-size silhouettes in the windows so that from the outside it looks the room is busy. That room was particularly freaky as it was so barren in comparison to how packed it would have been 150 years ago. I could feel the heckles rising and thought that it was about time we left.

Outside the courtyard is wonderful. There is still some of the old features but with lots of modern upgrades. The sun was shining and the on-site café looked particularly good so we stopped in for cappuccinos. They were great and even though the café is not part of the actual museum it is in the grounds and makes for a very peaceful and relaxing place to stop for a drink. It also has one of the best views of the Sydney tower which was a stark contrast to the 200 year old building we were sitting outside.

As with the Australia museum, the Barracks only costs $10 to get in and there is a great deal of information for the visitors but it’s probably not for everyone. If you have an interest in the local area and the history of Sydney then it’s worth a visit.