Convict made brick from Port Macquarie with whipping triangle frog mark

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Type: Convict bricks
Materials: Clay
Collection: Gillian Charchalis collection
Accession number: 2014.0025.0004

Description

A rectangular convict-made clay brick with triangular frog mark on one face. The clay is red-brown in colour. On the brick surface, there are remnants of light grey mortar, particularly on two longer faces. A section is broken and missing from one corner.

Brick with whipping triangle frog mark from Port Macquarie

About the collection

The Gillian Charchalis collection includes five convict bricks from Port Macquarie and Morpeth, New South Wales. Four bricks which originate from the Port Macquarie penal settlement feature whipping triangles and cat's paw frog marks. The fifth brick from Morpeth features a horseshoe frog mark. Frog marks are markings on the face of bricks which enabled the quota of bricks produced by each brick-making gang to be recorded. The cargo of the First Fleet included a small number of bricks and brick moulds. The first brickworks in the colony were established at Brickfield Hill, not far from Sydney Cove. By 1789, gangs of convict brick-makers were producing 10,000 bricks a month. The establishment of secondary penal settlements at Newcastle in 1804, and later Port Macquarie in 1821, saw the expansion of brick-making activities. Convict-made bricks are among few surviving objects of the convict past. The convict era has long been of interest to historians but ordinary Australians have often been less than willing to embrace their convict origins. The shame of convict ancestry has only recently been replaced by pride. It is perhaps partly due to this shame that little material culture from the convict period remains. Convict-made bricks, because of their very nature, are among these few surviving objects. They provide a link to the earliest days of the British settlement of Australia.

Read live from the Museum's Collection API (12/11/2026, 6:54:18 am). Record last updated by the Museum 2025-08-25. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.