Waramah/Cockatoo Island is one of Sydney Harbour’s most complex historical sites. Shaped by layers of incarceration, labour, industry, and governance, the island offers a rare opportunity to examine how power, punishment, and productivity were engineered into a single landscape—and how those histories are interpreted today.
This episode brings together curators, historians, archaeologists, and digital specialists to explore Cockatoo Island’s past and present. We begin with its global significance as part of Australia’s World Heritage–listed convict sites, tracing how solitary confinement, labour yards, reform institutions, and shipbuilding transformed the island into a microcosm of colonial authority and industrial ambition. From there, we turn to contemporary stewardship, discussing how the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust balances free public access with conservation, and how light-touch interpretation allows the island’s material textures to remain visible.
A central focus of the conversation is method. New technologies—LiDAR, aerial and confined-space drones, and bathymetric survey—are revealing features that are otherwise inaccessible, from tunnel interiors and dock geometry to the harbour floor itself. These tools are creating detailed digital records that support conservation planning, risk management, and education, while limiting physical intervention in fragile spaces. We consider how these datasets intersect with maps, photographs, archival sources, oral histories, and First Nations-led storytelling, and what it means for humans and machines to work together in the production of historical knowledge.
This episode invites listeners interested in Sydney Harbour, heritage practice, and historical method to reflect on how the past can be documented, preserved, and shared with care.
This event is in the 2025 History Now series. History Now is presented by the History Council of NSW in conjunction with the Chau Chak Wing Museum and the Vere Gordon Childe Centre.
History Now 2025 was supported by Create NSW.
