The Wire

Sydney’s Quarantine  Station was situated in a small cove at North Head, and was where for over 150 years new boat arrivals or people suspected of having a contagious illness were forced to spend time. Many of them spent that time decorating the sandstone cliffs of the cove and their inscriptions have become an historic archive, a window into travel, immigration, suffering death and survival. The ‘graffiti’ includes poems by Chinese and Arabic sailors, humorous memories of sea voyages and even relief carvings. They are doomed to erode from the soft sandstone and so have been documented  in a new book.