Abbotsford Convent has teamed up with She Shapes History to launch a women-led historical walking tour.
Award-winning feminist history collective She Shapes History is partnering with Abbotsford Convent to bring overlooked women’s stories to the surface.
Launching this month, the collaboration centres on a new site-responsive walking tour that traces the labour, creativity and resilience of generations of women who lived and worked within the historic precinct.
Drawing on deep historical research and ground-level storytelling, the two-hour experience guides visitors through rarely explored corners of the Convent. Expect layered histories of girls who woke before dawn to work in laundries, women separated from families, and quiet acts of care and friendship that emerged within rigid institutional systems. It’s not just a story of harm, but of dignity, support and survival under difficult conditions.
Abbotsford Convent x She Shapes History walking tour
- When: From Saturday 31 January
- Where: Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford
- Bookings: here
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Abbotsford Convent Foundation CEO Justine Hyde describes the precinct’s story as fundamentally one of women, shaped by courage, ingenuity, leadership and quiet acts of care. The partnership with She Shapes History reflects the Convent’s ongoing commitment to truth-telling, cultural stewardship and inclusive storytelling across the site.
She Shapes History founder Sita Sargeant calls the Convent one of Victoria’s most significant women’s history sites, making it the perfect location for the collective’s first partnership tour of this kind. The walking experience offers a powerful window into Australia’s complex social welfare history, revealing how institutions like the Convent shaped lives and communities far beyond their gates.
Visitors will move through spaces where silence and routine functioned as discipline, where unpaid labour supported the institution, and where faith dictated daily life. But they’ll also encounter human moments of connection, friendships formed under watchful eyes, and girls supporting one another within systems much larger than themselves.
This collaboration marks an expansion of how the Convent functions as a living cultural commons, inviting the community to experience the precinct through a richer, more nuanced lens. Stories of obedience, work and control sit alongside narratives of resilience, friendship and quiet determination.
The tour illuminates histories that have been rarely told and even more rarely centred, honouring the women who left their mark on this remarkable place and continue to define it. It’s a chance to see familiar Abbotsford Convent gates and grounds with fresh eyes, understanding the daily realities of those who lived, worked and survived here.
For more information, head here.
