The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience
The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience provides an overview of the history of the site as well as the stories of the women and children that spent time here. Most of the structures and buildings that made up the Cascades Female Factory have been removed or lost with time. Today, you can take your time as you wander through the space and listen to true tales of the courage, resourcefulness and resilience of the women lived, worked and aspired to a better life outside these same walls. The audio experience fills in the space between then and now.
The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience
Chapter 19: The Final Years (Location: Yard 4)
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With convict transportation to Van Diemen’s Land coming to an end, there was no longer any need for this establishment. So what happened next?
If at Cascades Female Factory, we recommend you listen to this chapter as you wander back through to Yard 3 (stop 19).
In 1853 transporation to Van Diemen’s Land stopped. The last female convict transport ship was the Duchess of Northumberland. She arrived in April 1853 with 216 convicts on board.
With transportation officially over, there was less need in the coming years for the establishment to remain the same size. Numbers of women convicts were rapidly declining. The system was winding down.
In 1856, the Factory’s status changed and it became a Gaol and House of Correction under the local authorities.
Numbers continued to decline to a point that much of the establishment was not being used, so the government opened up the site for use by other institutions. Care needed to be provided for disadvantaged, poor and unwell people – often the residue of the convict system.
Across the late 1800s, the buildings here were recycled and reused as institutions for paupers, the chronically ill, the elderly, women giving birth to 'illegitimate children', the mentally unwell, and juvenile offenders.
The Cascades Female Factory complex was subdivided and in 1905 auctioned by the government to private buyers.
Since then nearly all the buildings have been demolished with a number of industrial buildings constructed across the site including a winery, tennis courts, paint and fudge factories.
In the early 1970s, Yard One was put up for sale. Thankfully author and lecturer, Kay Daniels, and the Women’s Electoral Lobby obtained a grant to buy the Yard. Later, Yard Three and the Matron’s Quarters were also acquired. A group of passionate and dedicated volunteers cared for the site and it was open to tourists. In 2008 the Tasmanian State Government purchased the remaining part of Yard 4 to form the Historic Site as it is today.
By 2010, the Female Factory became a World Heritage Site, ensuring the protection of this place, these stories and this history.