The story of this place
Francis Greenway was a convicted forger transported to Australia, but Governor Macquarie gave him a second chance—designing this barracks to house his fellow convicts from 1819-1848. Nearly 1,000 men lived here in overcrowded wards, sleeping in hammocks so tight you could reach out and touch your neighbor, their days beginning at 5 AM with a tolling bell. Convicts escaped anyway—one caught in the Hunter Valley was hanged with his entire gang—proving that even Greenway's 'delicate balance of freedom and restraint' couldn't contain desperate men.