UNSHACKLED Exhibition
Australia’s premier convict exhibition. An award-winning digital experience revealing the untold story of 160,000 convicts who shaped Australia’s democracy and identity.
The True Convict Story
UNSHACKLED reveals the true story of Australia's 160,000 transported convicts. Not as victims, but as workers, resistors and democracy builders who shaped the nation we know today.
Many were assigned to private estates like Woolmers, where they learned trades, built colonial Tasmania, earned their freedom and often chose to stay. Among them were 3,600+ political prisoners — Irish rebels, Scottish radicals, Tolpuddle Martyrs and workers who fought for democratic rights.
Ann Ball
14 years for stealing, age 23
Joseph Lewis
Life for highway robbery, age 20
Eleanor Wilson
14 years for shoplifting, age 28
What You'll Experience
Augmented Reality Encounters
Point your device at convict portraits and watch them come alive. Hear their stories in their own words. Meet the political prisoners, the workers, the rebels who shaped Australian democracy.
40+ Video Documentaries
Discover individual convict stories through evocative video vignettes. Personal narratives that reveal the human faces behind the overwhelming statistics of transportation.
Immersive Digital Installations
Large-scale projections, original soundscapes and animated portraits create a multi-sensory journey. Dynamic fusion of film, sound and historical imagery brings the convict era vividly to life.
Traditional Museum Elements
View rare artefacts and objects from the convict era, expertly curated alongside innovative digital storytelling.
Interactive Screen-Based Media
Explore surprising, moving and immersive displays that blend rigorous scholarship with engaging design. Touch, discover and connect with stories spanning themes of repression, exploitation, rebellion and redemption.
Self-Guided Experience
Take your time exploring at your own pace. The exhibition is designed as a 45-60 minute self-guided journey, included with general admission.
Why UNSHACKLED at Woolmers Estate?
UNSHACKLED has found its semi-permanent home at Woolmers Estate because this is where the Assignment System story actually happened.
For 60 years, assigned convicts worked this land, lived in these cottages, learned trades in the blacksmith shop and helped build colonial Tasmania. This isn’t a reconstruction. These are the actual 18 original buildings where convicts gained skills, earned wages and shaped their futures.
The exhibition transforms how you experience Woolmers. Walk through the Free Settlers’ Cottages where assigned workers lived. Stand in the Blacksmith Shop where they learned trades. Explore the grounds they cultivated. Then use the UNSHACKLED digital experience to meet the individuals who actually lived these stories.
This combination of authentic place and innovative storytelling creates something unique: a fully immersive journey into Australia’s true convict foundations.
Free Settlers' Cottage
Blacksmith Shop
Digital Experience
Created by Leading Experts
UNSHACKLED is the result of a four-year collaboration. The result melds traditional museum presentation with engaging digital storytelling to create an experience that’s surprising, immersive and moving.
- Academics and historians from 10 Australian and international universities
- Digital History Tasmania led by Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Emeritus Professor Lucy Frost, two of Australia’s most revered convict historians
- Award-winning design team combining architectural sensitivity with experiential innovation
- Visual artists, filmmakers, animators and creative technologists creating cutting-edge digital experiences
- Musicians, poets and songwriters crafting original soundscapes
- Museum specialists ensuring rigorous curatorial standards
What Scholars Say
"UNSHACKLED overturns outdated views of convicts as helpless victims, instead revealing them as people of agency, resilience and influence. Transportation is reframed not as a tale of shame, but as one of Australia's great untold foundational stories of survival, resistance and transformation.
"With more than one in five Australians descended from convicts, these histories are both deeply personal and profoundly national. This exhibition helps us understand the struggles, resilience and influence of the transported, and how they continue to shape debates about freedom, fairness and identity.
Experience living history
Open Daily from 8am
Last grounds entry: 4pm
Grounds close: 6:30pm
Location
20 minutes from Launceston
17 minutes from Launceston Airport
Tasmanian Residents
FREE entry when bringing interstate or overseas guests