PEOPLE CENTRED HERITAGE - SYDNEY SPOTLIGHT // Graham Wilson on Hyde Park Barracks

“In terms of significance, they don’t get any higher than this,” –Graham Wilson

In the heart of Sydney, two of the city’s most important heritage places stand side-by-side.

Dating to the early nineteenth century, The Mint and Hyde Park Barracks have since housed a hospital, an immigration depot, an asylum, and law courts. Both carry centuries of irreplaceable history.
In 1979, NSW’s heritage legislation was still new and largely untested. When The Mint became a major test case for how it would operate, Graham was on site with a trowel in his hand. It was one of his first jobs as a recently-graduated heritage advisor. But the place soon came to take on personal significance for him.

One of the artefacts recovered during those early conservation works was a medicine bottle bearing the name of Graham’s great-great-great-grandmother Catherine Fox, who arrived in Sydney as an orphan in 1848, and was accommodated here as a new migrant.

The Mint is listed on the State Heritage Register, while Hyde Park Barracks is a UNESCO World Heritage listed site. Today, The Mint and Hyde Park Barracks are accessible to the public as part of the Sydney Living Museums project, where the history of both places is contextualised and explained. Both are full of stories like Graham’s—the stories of the people who made Sydney.

#people #immigration #sydney #conservation