Home: Convicts, Migrants and First Peoples

About the program

During this thought-provoking program students will investigate the themes of displacement and resilience through the experiences of convicts, migrants and Aboriginal people.

They will develop their knowledge about the far-reaching impacts of the convict system, and its impact on Aboriginal communities and Country. The experience of migration will also be explored through the stories of young female migrants who travelled to NSW, without their parents, in the 1850s.

Your students will:

  • Explore the UNESCO World Heritage–listed Hyde Park Barracks
  • Work like historians, analysing evidence in documents, artworks and artefacts
  • Spend significant amounts of time handling objects – both primary sources and reproductions

Queens Square, Macquarie Street Sydney NSW 2000. Phone +61 2 8239 2311

Hyde Park Barracks

Queens Square, Macquarie Street Sydney NSW 2000. Phone +61 2 8239 2311
  • 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
Maximum students
60 per session
Supervision ratios

The supervision ratio is 1:10 for primary groups and 1:15 for secondary groups. Teachers and parents attend free of charge at these ratios. One carer per student with special needs will be admitted free of charge

Additional visitor costs

Each additional visitor will be charged at the concession rate of $12

Browse all
Students sitting on the hillside, creating a watercolour painting of the view towards the Blue Mountains.
Onsite

A Colonial Eye

Students investigate the role of artists during the early colonial period and consider how they contributed to the development of the colony

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

Looking towards small cottage across paddocks.
Onsite

Expanding the Colony

Students explore the former farm and examine a range of sources to learn about the expansion of NSW in the 19th century and investigate its impacts on the environment, the people of the Boorooberongal clan and the colonisers

Two girls in school uniform making string in exhibition space with other students behind.
Onsite

Garuwanga Gurad (stories that belong to Country)

During this program at Museum of Sydney, on the site of first Government House, students have a unique opportunity to explore links between Indigenous and European histories, cultures and perspectives in the expanding Sydney colony of the 1800