The Convict Town


Stone Cutters Robert Havell after Major James Taylor 1823On arriving in Sydney Harbour, Captain Arthur Phillip wrote that Sydney Cove was one “in which ships can anchor so close to the shore, that in a very small expense quays may be constructed at which the largest vessels may unload”. Some were not so enamoured, such as Lieutenant Ralph Clark, who wrote in 1788, “This is the poorest country in the world... overrun with large trees, not one acre of clear ground to be seen”.The Black Snake William R Govett 1835

After 24,000 kilometres and eight arduous months at sea, the Australian continent was overwhelming and indeed shocking to a people used to European climate, geography and well-established cities.

Early maps show no prison buildings, the punishment was ‘transportation’ not incarceration, and the land itself acted as an outdoor gaol. Convict men and women were housed in separate camps they built for themselves, normally with wood from the local cabbage tree palm, plastered with mud. It would be 30 years before the Hyde Park Barracks building opened in 1819, and some convicts were housed there overnight, although it too was not a gaol.

Ravenet, Juan - Convictos en la Nueva Olanda [Convicts in New Holland] 1789-1794The first dwellings and early ‘official’ buildings were crude huts fashioned from wood that warped and shrank as it dried out.  Bricks were poorly fired, there was a lack of lime to make mortar and structures often collapsed in heavy rain.

Despite this, the town grew. A female convict wrote in 1788, “We now have two streets, if four rows of the most miserable huts you can possibly conceive of deserve that name. Windows they have none. . . so lattices of twigs are made by our people.”

In 1802, the French naturalist and draughtsman, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, drew a map of Sydney which clearly shows decisions made in the earliest years of the colony left a permanent mark on the future shape of the city.

The map shows approximately 70 huts, two windmills for grinding grain, storehouses and a Government wharf, a church and military battery. It depicts the road to Parramatta and the start of commercial life
George Street was clearly visible on maps as early as 1791, and its alignment in The Rocks has not altered since 1788, when it was first laid out and became the first road built by European1802 Lesueur 'Plan of the Town of Sydney, Capital of the English Settlements in the Antipodes's on the Australian Continent.

There are more than 100 heritage sites and buildings in The Rocks and the oldest house is Cadmans Cottage, built during this era in 1816. The Dawes Point Battery is the oldest remaining European structure, built in 1791, and three remaining walls of Fort Phillip on Observatory Hill, built 1804.

In 1800 there was one woman to four men and this ratio persevered for the next 40 years.

While convicts lived in separate camps in tents or shacks dotted around the early settlement, eventually a gaol was built on George Street where The Four Seasons Hotel now stands. When hangings took place, people would watch from the higher ground known then as Gallows Hill and now as Essex Street.

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