The Complete History Of Australia's Convict Slaves

[00:00:04]I'm in Sydney. It's a thriving city and one of the world's great metropolises.

[00:00:09]But a couple of hundred years ago, it was a very different place. A rudimentary British penal colony established on the far side of the world in one of the most hostile environments on the planet. For the first Europeans who called Australia home, life was tough and it was unforgiving.

[00:00:27]Come with me as [music] we explore Sydney's convict past.

[00:00:39]Beth, it's a amazing building. It's [music] It's not something you expect to see right in the middle of the the city of Sydney. Tell me what's the story of this building? Why is it here?

[00:00:48]>> So, this is a really interesting building. It's called the Hide Park Barracks. It was built as a prisoners barracks uh starting in 1817, finished in 1819. And the reason it was built was to be a dormatory for convict men who were in government service. So they're essentially the public workers of their day. What's really fascinating about it is it is built in this complex. As you can see, we're standing in the courtyard and it's got four sides. Um the building itself is largely original to its 1819 configuration. The the courtyard itself as well. And then we've got a remnant of original buildings on the north side which we've lost unfortunately on the south side. But the fact that this building is still here and still in public ownership is really quite amazing. It started as a convict dormatory, then afterwards became an immigration depot, an asylum for ill and destitute and homeless women, and then a whole complex of government offices and courts all the way up until 1979 when it was restored as a museum. So, which we continue to this day. So, it's a really rare survivor in Sydney in that it's been in public kind of service its entire life and that continues up until today. Let's let's go and have a closer look at it. It's just it's an extraordinary piece of architecture. I mean, it's it's quite unexpected. I you don't normally associate something like this with the idea of convicts when we talk about transportation and convict labor in Sydney.

[00:02:16]>> No, it's a highly designed architecturally. It was designed by a convict himself. The civ civil architect of the colony, Francis Greenway, was a serving convict when he designed this building.

[00:02:26]>> Beth, when you get up close to it, you start to notice the small details. The quite intricate brick work, the flourishes over the windows. I mean this is not a utilitarian warehouse is it? This is this is a grand statement of a building. What what was the what was the thinking behind the construction and design of this building?

[00:02:46]>> So Governor McQuary um when he ordered this building to be built, it was very much in a whole series of civic public works that he was building. churches, schools, courts, roads, this convict barracks, other hospitals, um, and the like were all part of his ideas around civilizing society and creating a kind of more morality within society through improvements in public works. So, ironically, the person who helped him to that end was himself a convict, Francis Greenway, um, who was still a serving convict when he was the architect who designed this building. And so, you'll see on the outside at least, a whole bunch of beautiful architectural ornaments and flourishes, whether it's the the brick work itself, whether it's the relieving arches above the windows, the symmetry of the building, it's a very Georgian building in that sense. um it has this sense of a kind of of a grandeur that was at equal parts um sort of imposing for the convicts who lived within it and redeeming for their character. So this idea of discipline, routine, hard work would redeem um the convicts and would enable them to rejoin society as as respected members of the community was sort of all part of how Mcquary thought about this the legacy he was living in s leaving in Sydney. Of course, he was hugely condemned for this approach and for this um flagrant wasting of public money, but it very much in sort of is a is a physical embodiment of that idea of kind of civilizing society through um improvements in architecture and urban planning really to some extent. The really interesting thing about the building is that on the outside it has all of these beautiful um ornaments, but once you like go inside, once you once you're that convict who goes inside, everything changes.

[00:04:51]>> Wow.

[00:04:54]>> Beth, this is obviously the heart of the convict living and sleeping arrangements. just what would this have been like when this was packed with dozens of men 200 years ago.

[00:05:05]>> So this room really gives you a sense of what that kind of lived experience would have been like. And this would have been repeated in every room in this building.

[00:05:14]So 70 men in the bigger rooms, 35 men in the smaller rooms. And you can really start to imagine what that would have felt like. You're so close. So you're sleeping, you know, this far from another person. Not only that, you've been out on a work site all day. You've, you know, it's Sydney, so you're probably smelly, you're sweaty. There are privies in the back of the building, but you've got to leave the building and go out. So, a lot of the men just would have used the bucket in the corner. So, just imagine the smell, height of summer, right at the eaves of the building. Um, and you know, rats are everywhere. So convicts would have written quite frequently, particularly in the 1830s and 40s when the conditions in this building were really starting to decline. Um, so the windows would be broken, the rat infestation was terrible, there's drafts coming in in the winter, there's heat pouring in in the summer, and this is your one place of kind of refuge and solitude, but it's not really. So you're in close contact.

[00:06:20]There's a lot of reports of fights in the wards. There's a lot of reports of um quite sort of poignant, quite human activities. A lot of the convicts would repair their own clothes at night. It's the only time they had just by candle light. A lot of the convicts would weave themselves um sort of straw hats out of cabry palm fronds because the convict uniform didn't give them anything with shade, but they were working outside in Sydney all the time. So there's these little small intimate moments in amongst the kind of violence and kind of brutality of this life. There's also a lot of illicit activity that's happening in the wards at night. So there's gambling, you know, there's reports of of convicts sneaking in um alcohol and other things. And you know, and there's obviously personal relationships that are happening. In the 1830s, the authorities got so concerned by this that they actually added in peoles to look into the building. You can see one at the end of the uh room there um to look in particularly to kind of guard against illicit sexual activity that might have been happening between the convicts. So it's in a room like this where you know even today you can smell the the cord in the canvas of the of the hammocks that if you kind of close your eyes and imagine it that sort of that that daily life that kind of intimate personal oh my god I might have lived something like that really comes into the four.

[00:07:46]>> Obviously the hammocks are reproductions but how much of this room we're standing in is original from that convict era.

[00:07:52]>> So the floorboards are original. the brick work on the walls. Um, we lime wash it regularly, but it's the exact same technique, the exact same materials that would have been used. All of the roof um is original. And so even that sort of flaking um lime wash paint is all original. These massive um timber trusses across um the building. They we know are from the Pennet Hills convict timber getter camp. would have been these enormous trees um that would have been felled and shaped and and brought here to create this um incredible structure. The fireplace at the end, ironically, is original. And it's ironic because we also know that this timber structure that um holds up the convicts is built. It's a modern replica, but it's built in exactly the same location that it would have been built in. We know that because of the imprints that it's left on the building fabric, which means they built it right up against the fireplace, which meant the convicts could never have a fire, just a fireplace, um, to kind of taunt them, I suppose, in some ways.

[00:09:07]So, the hide park barracks where we are now, you know, this is built kind of 30 years into the convict experiment in Sydney. So it was opened in 1819. So if you go back 30 years to 1788 when the first fleet, you know, sort of first arrived on these shores, we're kind of in that next generation, if you will, of the convict experience. But many things haven't changed. So this place was founded as a place of exile and a place of punishment for criminals from generally from um England, Scotland, and Ireland. um broken down it's roughly about 70% were from England um 25% were from Ireland small percentage from Scotland and then there's a really tiny kind of 5% from other parts of the British Empire so they did use the transportation sentence um for crim for crimes that happened across the British Empire but the but the core of it is the same the philosophy is that you would um encourage lawful behavior through extreme punishment so whether that was execution Whether that was being sentenced to live transportation or transportation for 7 years or 14 years, the idea was that that would deter other people from committing crime. So a lot of the convicts that ended up here in Australia um were quite young. Often they were single. They were um you know convicted of property crimes by and large. Um but those were considered quite serious crimes um in the England of the day. So when people were first sent to Sydney in particular, you know, this was Aboriginal country. This was e deeply etched with meaning um and ancestral connections for the Gatagle people um of this of this part of Sydney. And and the convict labor enabled a complete transformation of of this country and and beyond because really that was their job. their job was to come out here um and fend for themselves to build a new community to build a new society. By the time we get to when the barracks was built, you know, Sydney had taken on the kind of contours of an English town primarily. So if you sort of arrived here in 1815, you'd be quite surprised by what you would find. You would find, you know, streets and houses and businesses that would really be quite reminiscent of any sort of village or town in England. The big difference of course is that the majority of the of the um population were convicts or ex-convicts. Um so this was a really unique society. Um say if we take 1815 um you've got Aboriginal people moving through the town. You've got a very small elite of free settlers. You've got a very small percentage of kind of government officials and military officers who by the way had nothing to do with the convicts. They didn't guard them. They didn't they weren't in charge of the convicts in any way. And then you had this very large convict and ex-convict population. And you had the children of convicts as well who were always of course born free. So basically by the time this building came into functionality, this was a convict's colony primarily. Um so if you were walking down the street, you were just surrounded by people serving time, people that had finished their sentence, um and people who had just arrived in the colony as new as new convicts. So the other really interesting thing about this um building and complex of buildings really is what happens in 1830. So at that point again the convict system changes quite radically. There's a new governor, Governor Darling who's quite a um kind of strict administrator and there's a kind of a new feeling uh both in England and in the colony that the the convict system has become too slack um too enjoyable for the convicts.

[00:12:59]needs to really be tightened up. It needs to be more severe. It needs to be more punitive. It needs to go back to being that supposed deterrent to stop crime um happening at home. So this place again becomes really central to that change. The convict administration moves in and this sort of massive convict bureaucracy begins to be um administered from this site. So it becomes the sort of administrative hub of the convict system if you will. So rather than being a dormatory for convict labor that is doing public works in Sydney, this almost becomes a kind of warehouse of convict labor. So people are coming off the ships, coming up here, being mustered, being assigned to private service to help generate wealth for the colony and for the elite. In the process of course that convict labor is radically transforming Aboriginal country and it's an overnight change for a lot of those communities whose life whose sacred sites whose um gathering grounds whose cultivated landscapes are all completely changing overnight. And so you can't look at the convict system without looking at the impact that it's had across not just the kind of development of Australia as a as a colonial um society, but also the impact that that had on Aboriginal people and how close convicts and Aboriginal people were in many parts of of the colony. A lot of times the convicts were the first people that Aboriginal people met and there developed a lot of relationships and trading and um other kinds of um sort of transactions that were happening between those two communities but also a great deal of violence and and a huge amount of disruptive change that happened.

[00:14:53]>> Wow.

[00:14:55]So, we've uh we've brought some things out for you from the collection store.

[00:15:00]What's really remarkable about the High Park Barracks and the building itself is that when it was restored in the late 70s and early 80s, they lifted the floorboards inside the building and they found just an amazing assemblage of fabrics, papers, all the kinds of things that you see here, bits of leather, pipes, bone, all this stuff that had either fallen between the floorboards, been deliberately swept under the floorboards in kind of a cleaning up sort of sense or as you can tell from some of the larger things here deliberately concealed beneath the floorboards. You know, something this size isn't going to just sort of randomly end up there. The other thing you need to know about the hide park barracks is all throughout its life um it has been plagued by rats. And so from day one, the convicts were complaining about the rats, the rats, and how they when they were sleeping in their hammocks at nights. The the rats would climb up their chest and bite at their noses and they wouldn't be nibbling at the the rope of the canvas. And you know, there was so much food stored around the site to to feed the convicts, so many warm bodies inside that it just became a haven for rats. And so along the edges of the buildings, you would find these little pockets where the rats would build nests. So we've brought out a couple of um examples for you here. We found these enormous rats nests when the the building was opened up. You can see that there is a whole bunch of material that the rats have gathered. These little scraps of fabric. Many of these are date more from the the women's period than the convict period. Um, but there are convict scraps amongst uh the fabric and they've they've made them into these nests, constantly changing them over time. In the process, they've brought in things like that's a that's a a bone handle of a knife in there. But we've also found things like bits of pipes, bits of shoe leather, all kinds of different things that get sort of paper that all comes into these nests. And if you look really closely with this one, there's actually a mummified rat itself is here sort of melded into into this old old nest.

[00:17:25]We've left quite a few of them intact like this one. But um for some of them, we've kind of we've pulled them apart and we've conser cleaned and conserved what we found inside. And that's where we found some of this amazing convict material. What I I just have to say, Beth, what I love about this is that the these items would never have been preserved. The people that discarded bits of old cloth and bits of paper and their old broken pipe, they never would have thought to preserve this for posterity. And the rats have done that job for us. It's incredible.

[00:17:56]>> They're the first curators. That's true.

[00:17:58]What I find really special about this collection is how ordinary it is and how it keeps a record of people in the 19th century that that records were not kept about in that sort of ordinary dayto-day life. I also find it quite an emotional collection because this is things that have touched people's skin. So whether it's bits of fabric, whether it's, you know, pieces of paper from relig religious tracks or other things that people read, these books here are quite remarkable. This is a a a Bible and a prayer book from 1848 that we know belonged to a convict. We know that that Bibles and prayer books were given to convicts on board the transport ships.

[00:18:43]Now, he either treasured those and and stashed them away for safekeeping or wanted nothing to do with them and discarded them. Um, but either way, they survived from 1848 until the early 1980s under the floorboards at the High Park barracks for us to discover and learned so much about um those previous residents that we just would not have had that sort of sense of closeness and intimate understanding of without this collection.

[00:19:12]>> Well, nothing sums that up more than this absolutely magnificent what I was a convict shirt. Is that is that what we're looking at here?

[00:19:18]>> Yes. Yes. So, there's we've got um a couple of them in the in the collection.

[00:19:22]and they're quite rare. Um, they're not rare in the sense of the shirt itself.

[00:19:26]The shirt itself is just a kind of a typical working man's shirt, but actually to find ones that are definitely associated with a convict is quite rare. We have a couple in the collection and and and quite a few scraps, as you can see, that that have come out of the the rat's nest. What would happen is a convict when they're assigned to the barracks, they would have to give up all of their belongings and their clothing that would be put into storage for them for later. and they would be issued with a full set of clothing. Two shirts like this one, pants, shoes, cap, jacket. Um, and what we find all through the building are these little scraps of of a convict shirt because they wouldn't last very long, but you'd only get the two a year.

[00:20:09]So, the old shirt they would they would cut up and they would use to repair. You can see with this shirt um that there there have been repairs made um at the shoulder here. That's a different kind of fabric than the fabric of the main part of the shirt. The thing about these shirts as well um is that they would be marked um with a red stamp of BO for Board of Ordinance and a broad arrow or PB for prisoners barracks and a broad arrow. So that really marked out the convict as essentially belonging to the government. So the shirt was government issue. The convict and their labor belonged to the government. And so it it was a real shift for convicts when they moved into this building here. Um it was a big shift for them in terms of their own working hours and control of their time and their and their activities. But also they were made to wear these shirts that kind of marked them as government property. So psychologically it was quite a big shift as well. Um as you can see this particular shirt has lived a a kind of a difficult life after its convict days. um you know probably balled up by by a rat under the floorboards but has been preserved for us to look at today as as a result.

[00:21:21]>> Not only did the rats do a good job of adding to the collection, they've become part of the collection themselves.

[00:21:26]>> They have. We are a little bit obsessed with rats here at the Hide Park Barracks. It is true in 1831 there was a a a position Henry Green who was the kind of official rat catcher for the Hide Park Barracks. And in that year he he caught and killed 352 rats in the month of May alone. So they were a regular part of the barracks in its history and a big part of our story today.

[00:21:59]So we are uh standing aboard the replica of HMBB Endeavor. Uh it's been with the National Maritime Museum uh almost as long as the museum itself's been around.

[00:22:10]Um it's replica is about as accurate as you can get. It's based on a comprehensive survey of archival information, plans, um all sorts of documentation about the ship and how it was built and how it was refitted for Cook's Voyage.

[00:22:26]>> James, there's a lot of misunderstanding about Cook's Voyage. People think that this is inextricably linked with the first fleet. They think there were convicts on this ship. Let's let's just dispel those those rumors and and and put this in perspective where this fits in the historic account and why this was such an important voyage.

[00:22:42]>> Absolutely. Well, uh yes, I can I can state with absolute certainty that neither Cook nor Endeavor were involved with the first fleet in any way, shape, or form. Um Cook was actually dead nine years when the first fleet arrived. He had died in 1779 in Hawaii. Uh so he was obviously nowhere near >> [laughter] >> Port Jackson or what we now know as Sydney Harbor in 1788.

[00:23:07]Cook's voyage did have an influence, I guess you could say, on on the colonization of Australia uh in in two ways. Uh one, Cook had claimed Australia uh east coast of Australia for King George III uh at the end of his first voyage. And the second thing was that he was a very good cgrapher and he charted the east coast as he moved from south to north in 1770. So that uh had an effect because for the first time uh planners in Great Britain had a map. They could look at a map. They could look at different ports, different rivers, see areas that would be prime for settlement. And so those were probably his two biggest legacies for what would ultimately become Sydney. So tell me about the original endeavor and Cook's voyage. What was he what was he even doing exploring this part of the world?

[00:23:59]>> Well, uh it had a lot to do with the belief among many European powers, but particularly Great Britain that there was a an unknown southern continent on Earth, Terra, Australas, Incognito. That's what they wanted to find. And so Cook's voyage was originally uh put together for the transit of Venus. The British government was very interested in that and getting the scientific information that could be derived from that. But the secret part of the mission was to scoot down to the south uh and to look for this continent.

[00:24:34]>> So tell me about the voyage. So how long was Cook at sea for? Did he fulfill the uh the ambitions of the of the journey?

[00:24:42]>> Well, he did. Yes. Um he was uh outfitted with this vessel. And I should point out that Endeavor was not built for exploration. It was built to carry coal. That was the whole point uh of this ship being built in 1764. It was built as a collier. Uh but it was ideal uh for the purpose. It was large enough that it could carry equipment, supplies, enough people to crew it and to do all the scientific work that needed to be done.

[00:25:10]>> So how many how many men did Cook have sailing with him on the Endeavor?

[00:25:13]>> There were 94 crew. Uh well crew and scientists. Yeah, Joseph Banks and his his group. Um, so, uh, you can imagine that's a lot of humanity to cram into a fairly small area. Uh, the vessel's just shy of 30 meters in length. It's just shy of 9 m across at its widest point.

[00:25:32]So, very confined, very crowded. Uh and then when you put in all of that, the scientific equipment, uh the food, the water, everything that's needed to do this lengthy voyage at sea, it made it a very uh confined place indeed.

[00:25:47]>> What was the feeling back in Britain when Cook reported that he'd found this this land? Did the British straight away think, "Okay, great. We're going to expand the empire out to this area," or was it just a footnote that they said, "We'll come back and do something with it later on?"

[00:25:59]>> Yeah, the response, I think, at the time was a bit tepid. Um there wasn't a whole deal of interest not only on the part of the British but European powers generally. The Dutch had been down here in the 17th century. They knew there was a continent here but there really wasn't a huge amount of interest. Um what they saw didn't really capture their imagination. Um it may very well be the fact that they didn't go ashore and didn't have a very good look around, but what they saw from uh from the ocean uh didn't really compel them to do much.

[00:26:30]So, uh, the same was true at the time.

[00:26:33]Uh, when Cook got back from his voyage, he reported that there was a continent down there. Um, he had a fairly favorable review of it. Uh, but the British at the time just didn't have the interest that they developed later. Uh, and a lot of that had to do with the fact that the convicts at that time were going to North America. Uh, and it was only in the wake of the American Revolution and the American victory over the British that the British realized, oop, we've got to have somewhere to put our convicts. And so that focus shifted down here to Australia instead. Tell me what Cook did when he first arrived in Botney Bay. We know that he didn't come up here to Sydney Harour. He arrived in Botney Bay. How much time did he spend in Australia? What what what discoveries did they make while they were here? It >> was a relatively short amount of time.

[00:27:13]The entire voyage from the point they made landfall uh in in New South Wales until they left to go up to what's now Indonesia was only about four months. Um and a fair bit of that time was actually spent repairing Endeavor um due to an accident which I can get to in a moment.

[00:27:29]But um yeah uh it was a fairly quick voyage. Uh it was a coasting voyage.

[00:27:34]They stopped in a couple of places just to have a look around um to resupply, get water, uh get wood, but uh really uh Cook's primary interest was just to kind of make a quick survey of eastern the east coast of Australia and then move on. And that's what they did.

[00:27:51]>> And of course Banks was on board as well. and the the the discoveries about botany um also caused lots of fascination back in Britain. Tell us a little bit about Joseph Banks and his team.

[00:28:02]>> So he was a renowned scientist uh bit of a polymath and he had a group with him.

[00:28:08]Uh he had artists, he had botonists, he had experts in flora and fauna. Um and they would examine the local wildlife.

[00:28:16]Uh so they were collecting specimens, they were making observations. Uh and this was all unexplored territory for Banks and his group. So uh some of the discoveries that they made were completely unknown to science at the time and really exciting uh particularly for uh European uh scientists.

[00:28:37]You can't tell the story of the colonization of Australia without also telling the story of the people who were here first. For indigenous Australians, English exploration, colonization, and convicts tell a story of displacement, loss of identity, and deep despair.

[00:28:55]To help understand this vital yet often neglected side of the story, I spoke with Nolen Timbrey from the La Peru's Aboriginal Land Council.

[00:29:05]When Cook arrived, he arrived in 1770 and we know from uh both historical books as well as our own stories that have been handed out through handed down through generations that um the Aboriginal people that he encountered here in Botney Bay or Gay uh initially didn't want much to do with him. They they stayed away. They watched from corners. they uh were a little bit I think a little bit fearful that cuz you know in our stories in our legends it they talk about um uh I guess the the idea that this floating vessel that nobody really understood were spirits retaining. It wasn't until Cook and and some of his men actually boarded a a smaller boat to come onto shore that he was opposed by a couple of warriors. And that was that that first act of conflict, I guess, in in our country. We know that the the warriors opposed the landing. We know that Cook or one of his men fired shots.

[00:30:12]There wasn't a lot of understanding between the two. Um, I guess from our point of view, we just were opposing that that entry onto our land. And I know that has some cultural significance, too, because um, you know, traditionally, you don't you don't cross into into another uh another group's lands without permission. The shots were fired and and the warriors did run away from that. We do know that there were families uh all living around the coast. So there was I guess cause for alarm. Uh and we know from stories we also know from cooks journals or the journals and that that Aboriginal people around gay just didn't didn't interact with um any of the crew of the endeavor after that. They stayed away.

[00:31:00]These days it it seems that there's uh more of that understanding about the opposition to Terranolius.

[00:31:11]what traditional Aboriginal people saw of use of land uh is was not what the the newcomers or the the European um the cook and the endeavor etc would have seen. Aboriginal people traditionally only took what they needed from the land to survive. There just needs to be a lot more engagement and a lot more acknowledgement about the history and the and the really dark history that surrounds all of that. I think my my my key message that I really want everybody to to know and understand is that especially here when I if I'm talking about the community here at Labaroo we um you know the community here and the people who live here now you know there's a lot the majority of our community can trace their ancestry back to this land so or to around the Sydney basin. So, we're we we descend from the first of the First Nations people impacted by European arrival. And we're still here. Uh we're still practicing culture, maybe not in a traditional sense. We're still caring for country and and we're still a a discrete Aboriginal community here on Sydney's doorstep.

[00:32:49]If you committed a crime in 19th century Britain, you'd be sent to the penal colony of New South Wales. And if you committed a crime in the penal colony in New South Wales, you were sent here to Cockatu Island.

[00:33:04]This is the original convict cook built in about 1839 to supply meals to the convicts in the barracks just next door.

[00:33:11]And it's an absolutely extraordinary building. I mean, it's been through lots of facelifts over the centuries. It's had many different roles, but you don't have to look far to see evidence of the convicts who constructed it with their bare hands. The amazing thing about Cockatu Island is the convicts had to build the prison that would house them.

[00:33:27]When they came here, there were nothing but tents and rough shacks, and in a short period of time, they quarried these massive sandstone blocks and built their own prison around them. This is the main barracks. This is the the convict built barracks constructed in the late 1830s, early 1840s. Just imagine what it was like in here as a convict. The whole island site was supposed to accommodate only about 300 or so convicts, but within years of it opening, there were more than 500 men here. There would have been between 50 and 100 men crammed into this one small room. The only ventilation coming from those small windows up the top. The men forced to live, work, sleep on hammocks in here. Imagine the stench. Imagine what it was like crammed in here with so many people.

[00:34:11]As we come out into the main courtyard, you really get a sense of what this complex is all about. The the main convict buildings surround this courtyard. Even when you were free from your cell, you'd still feel imprisoned in here. So, we've got barracks on every side. There was a hospital, a dispensary over here. And then this rather impressive building was the main messaul where convicts would eat their meals.

[00:34:37]Coming in now to what was the old convict mess hall. And I mean, as you can see looking around me, this has changed a lot. This place was used extensively during the Second World War.

[00:34:47]It's obviously today used for functions, but you can still see the small elements that indicate what this was like. The roof would have been redone. It would have been a shingle roof originally, but these huge sandstone blocks all around us. I mean, looking over here on this wall, even under all these coats of paint, you can still see the original sandstone the convicts put in place.

[00:35:05]These are chisel marks from the convicts carving these stones out of the rock around the island. It's just incredible that this history remains. And for so many decades, places like this were going to be torn down. And it wasn't until relatively recently that we decided to preserve them. Thank god we did.

[00:35:23]It goes without saying that life here on Cockatu Island was pretty harsh for the prisoners. These were the worst of the worst, the repeat offenders, escapes, murderers, the population that couldn't be kept within the colony. And they were brought here to the middle of Sydney harour to this island. And it was incredibly difficult for them. Not only were living conditions appalling on Cockatu Island. They could hear the sounds of laughter and people living their ordinary lives in the colony just across the harbor. And the interesting mix of people here is always fascinating. It wasn't just convicts. It wasn't just your typical English and Irish convicts who'd been sent out here.

[00:35:59]There were Chinese laborers. There were African-Americans who'd come off the gold fields. There was a whole range of people who were sent here for imprisonment on Cockatu Island. And these were really the worst of the prisoners. And when they misbehaved on Cockatu Island, they found themselves here. The solitary confinement cells.

[00:36:19]This is pretty nasty stuff.

[00:36:25]Yeah. Okay. This is pretty awful. This is a tiny cramped space. It's about 6 ft by 9 ft. Imagine what it was like to be trapped down here. These solid sandstone walls making it absolutely freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer.

[00:36:40]Trapped in here for days at a time in the dark. Your only company, the dozens of rats scurrying around. This would have been absolute hell on earth.

[00:36:53]This is the building I've been most looking forward to seeing here on Cockatu Island because the story of this penal camp is not just about the prisoners in those barracks over there.

[00:37:02]It's about the men who guarded them. And that's what this is here. This is the original guard house for the guards at Cockatu Island. And it's just an extraordinary building. I mean, the roof is long gone. Stone has been taken away.

[00:37:15]This is not in original condition. But just have a look what's left. We've got these again these massive sandstone blocks, ironically carved by the convicts to protect the men who would be preventing them from having freedom.

[00:37:27]We've got these huge hooks. This is where guards would have hung rifles and kit at the ready in case something went on in the barracks behind us.

[00:37:37]As we walk on these massive sandstone blocks like thousands of people have done over the centuries, we arrive here at the fireplace. And Sydney, as hot as it gets in summer, is pretty cold in winter. And especially when you're stuck on this rock out in the middle of Sydney harour in winter, this fireplace would have been your absolute best friend. But have a look over here. There's something just extraordinary. Look at these ports carved into the Sansa. And they're even numbered. These are musket ports. This was a fortress. If the convicts in the barracks broke out, the guards could barricade themselves in here and fire through these ports at the convicts.

[00:38:12]It's absolutely extraordinary the history that this place tells. For decades, these buildings were scheduled to be torn down. No one appreciated the significance of what they represented.

[00:38:21]It's only relatively recently that we've started to understand the history, to understand what stories buildings like this reveal. When you come to a place like this, you really are walking with the ghosts of Sydney's convict past.

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