New Beginnings: Female Immigration Depot

Did you and your family or your ancestors come to Australia from another country? Arriving from another country to make Australia home is a common experience for many people living in Australia.

It was also the experience of the 40,000 women and children who passed through the Hyde Park Barracks between 1848 and 1887 when it was the Female Immigration Depot. Women who arrived alone in the colony stayed at the Barracks until they found work or were collected by their family.

The first to stay at the depot were orphans from Ireland. They came to Australia in 1848–50 through a British government program called the Earl Grey scheme. These girls and young women were aged between 14 and 18. Can you imagine travelling on your own to a new country?

Many of the girls who came to Australia as part of the Earl Grey scheme were escaping famine in Ireland. Their arrival helped to balance the population, which at that time was largely male. The young women and girls mostly found work in domestic service.

I saw them land … a few days after I saw some of them crying in the streets, neither a penny in their pockets, nor a mouthful of meat to eat, nor any friends to look at them …

Convict Joseph Lingard, 1846 ¹

Thousands of other women followed, drawn to NSW by opportunities not available in their home countries. They sought husbands, work and financial prosperity. Some were assisted through other schemes; others paid for their own travel to Australia. Some women arrived with their children, to reunite with family already here. Most girls and women left the depot quite quickly, while others stayed for weeks or months.

Look around the gallery. On the wall and in the showcases, you will see the kinds of items the immigrant women brought with them to Australia.

Listen to Irish immigrant Margaret Hurley describe the contents of her travel box, which are illustrated in black-and-white on the wall of the gallery.

This gallery uses artistic interpretation in addition to the story guide to focus on four themes:

1. Famine 
2. Voyage
3. Barracks
4. New life.

Watch the videos that show the artwork and listen to the story guide below.