Section two of five · 4 pieces

Fourteen hectares of quarantine station, and a tour that leaves after dark

Q Station at North Head — fourteen hectares of quarantine history, a cemetery on the headland, and an after-dark programme that runs alongside heritage accommodation.

Weatherboard isolation ward buildings at Q Station on the North Head headland in late afternoon light — North Head held Sydney’s quarantine station from the 1830s until 1984. The wards now trade as accommodation and function rooms.Photo: Q Station+whales cropped · Wikimedia Commons

Aerial view of a coastal headland with scattered buildings, roads and sports courts amid bushland — Fourteen hectares of quarantine station on the headland, held inside a national park.Photo: AerialViewNorthHead, Sydney · Wikimedia Commons

Lead piece

Fourteen Hectares of Quarantine Station, and the Cemetery the Tours Walk Past

Documents the North Head Quarantine Station's operational history from its establishment through to its National Park conversion, drawing on the New South Wales State Archives quarantine registers and the cemetery's documented interments. Establishes what is in the record before examining what the after-dark programme makes of it.

Read the piece

A Tour That Leaves After Dark and Beds That Come With the Story
Examines the Q Station after-dark programme as a commercial product — ticketing structure, accommodation upsell, and how the site markets its heritage to overnight guests differently from day visitors.
The North Head Cemetery and the Gap Between the Register and the Story
Examines the documented interment record at the North Head Quarantine Station cemetery — who is recorded, what years the register covers, and how the tour's characterisation of the site compares with what the archival record contains.
A Theatre Built in 1886, and the Story That Has Persisted in Its Programme Notes
Covers the documented history of the Princess Theatre in Melbourne and the persistent story of Federici — the baritone who died on stage in 1888 — tracing how that story has been repeated in the theatre's own publicity across the decades.

The other sections