A sculpture in the forecourt of MACq 01 on the Hobart Waterfront by Rowan Gillespie honouring the convict women transported to Van Diemen’s Land and the children who sailed with them

They came in their thousands, shiploads of impoverished convict women and children. From 1803 to 1853, almost 13,000 convict women together with 2,000 children arrived in Van Diemen’s Land. For decades after transportation stopped and the island was renamed Tasmania, a “convict stain” spread over the stories of their lives. This project lifts the amnesia, and publicly remembers them at the very place where they disembarked.