AUSTRALIA | Friday, 4 March 2011 | Views [1008]
When the first convicts arrived in Sydney they lived in tents and houses scattered around the city, and were expected to report for convict duty each day (at that time escape and survival in Australia was pretty much a death sentence anyway).
Eventually though the convicts were too hard to control and so in 1819 the Hyde Park Barracks was built, officially as a 'boarding house' but a prison in most respects.
The convicts could thus be kept under strict rules in one place and easily roused for their many hours of work each day,
About 50,000 men and boys lived here for the next 30 years until 1848 when the convict system ended and the Barracks closed.
The clock above was apparently ominous for convicts, who did have an hour or two of free time in the evenings and the odd day off, but had to report home by 9pm or the gates were locked, and they were in BIG trouble.
The name under the clock is "L. Macquarie," the influential Governor who started to clean up the city in its early days and create a more organized and structured system.
