Multiple points of view: introduction to the museum

When the Hyde Park Barracks museum was redesigned in 2019–20, the goal was to tell history from multiple viewpoints. In this site study you will explore:

• the role and significance of the Hyde Park Barracks in building the town of Sydney and its impact on Aboriginal nations, including experiences of continuity and change relating to colonial expansion
• the experiences of convicts who lived at the Barracks from 1819 to 1848
• the lives of immigrant women who passed through the Barracks from 1848
• the stories of women who lived in the Barracks after 1862, when it also became an asylum for infirm and destitute women
• the causes and effects of the convict system. This includes the impact on Country and on Aboriginal people’s experiences of colonisation, both in the past and the present
• the contestability of how the history of convicts and colonisation is interpreted and understood, and changing interpretations of historical events from different points of view
• how perspectives can be shaped by available sources of information, including your own perspective as a museum visitor.

Watch this YouTube video for a brief virtual tour of the Barracks: