2 Best Sights in Sydney, New South Wales

From the 1830s onward, ship passengers who arrived with contagious diseases were isolated on this outpost in the shadow of North Head until pronounced free of illness. You can access the station as part of a guided tour, and now stay overnight in the four-star hotel and cottage accommodation known as Q Station; there are also two waterfront restaurants. There are day tours and five different evening ghost tours (the station reputedly has its fair share of specters) that depart from the visitor center at the Quarantine Station, and a "ghostly sleep-over" for those who want to spend the night in reputedly haunted rooms. Reservations are essential.

Visitors can also visit the site without taking a tour; however, if you want to dine, you must make prior restaurant reservations.

Completed in 1894 to replace the main Rum Hospital building, which had stood on the site since 1811, this institution provided an infinitely better medical option. By all accounts, admission to the Rum Hospital was only slightly preferable to death itself. Convict nurses stole patients' food, and abler patients stole from the weaker. The kitchen sometimes doubled as a mortuary, and the table was occasionally used for operations.

In front of the hospital is a bronze figure of a boar. This is Il Porcellino, a copy of a statue that stands in Florence, Italy. According to the inscription, if you make a donation in the coin box and rub the boar's nose, "you will be endowed with good luck." Sydney citizens seem to be a superstitious bunch, because the boar's nose is very shiny indeed.