Eleven shiploads of Irish girls, orphaned by the Great Famine of the 1840s, arrived in Sydney between 1848 and 1850. They were housed in the Hyde Park Barracks before going out to work and marry in Sydney and beyond. In the 1990s, a worldwide movement among the Irish diaspora to commemorate the Famine, led to the construction of Sydney's Famine memorial, set into the Hyde Park Barracks perimeter wall.
