Say convicts and most of us think of the whip, the noose and leg irons but Hyde Park Barracks was never a jail, more a construction camp erected to house the men who built early Sydney. Most of the men had been transported to Australia from around the British Empire after being convicted of a crime or several. They would either be sent to work for private employers or sentenced to gang labour for the government. From 1819 the Barracks provided the home for most of those gang convicts.

When you visit the Barracks today you can explore the lives they led. The wards of the top floor look much as they did 190 years ago. By lying in the hammocks, the convicts' beds, you can share the view they had every night of their sentence.

Our computer database records the names, crimes, sentences and occasionally further punishment of over 15,000 convicts who spent time at the barracks. You can search the records that convict clerks spent years scratching with nib and ink and discover in seconds what they would have taken days to find.