Day 4

It was our second last day at the site today, and our new crew of volunteers were ready to experience their first archaeological excavation! Thursday's group included: Jon Prangnell, Tam Smith, Kevin Rains, Alex Wisniowiecka, Sarah Lewis, Jamie Allwood, Kate Shepherdson, Elisabeth Stough, Camille Kirby and Alanna Speirs.

By the end of Wednesday we had started to remove Excavation Unit (XU) 9, and the first task today was to complete this XU. XU9 was a coarse sandy layer that we found underlying our pit feature (see Day 3). Once we had cleared, sieved and sorted this XU completely, we photographed and recorded the features exposed in the pit. XU10 was a wet soil located in one small area of the pit, and while this was being cleared by two of our team, more were put to work removing XU11. This XU covered almost the entire site, and was a dry, dark soil.

The rest of the day was spent clearing XU11 from the eastern half of the site. This took all day because there were massive amounts of artefacts embedded within the sediment, which made both the excavation and the sieving hard work. Out of this level we were removing whole beer bottles, broken glass from window panes and bottles, tons of corroded metal, small pieces of ceramic, some plastic and corroded tin cans. Most of this material dates to around the early 1970s, and we assumed that these items were dumped here around this time.

Around lunchtime we were visited by Mr Don Hacker, formerly of the Water Transport Association (WTA). The WTA were based at the Naval Stores between 1959 and 1985. Don provided with us with oral accounts of the Martini-Henri rifles being interred into the ground, who in turn had heard it from his companions in the WTA. Interestingly enough, when we showed him our site, Don told us that our dump area was a rubbish pile from the WTA time of occupation, and that he may have even used the very bottles that we were removing.

By the end of today we had excavated most of the eastern half of the pit, but we hadn't removed all of XU11. Tomorrow is the last day, and we will be trying to remove as much as possible before backfilling, resealing the site and restoring the ground surface. Thanks especially to our hard working crew, Don Hacker for visiting the site, and Christine Ianna from the Queensland Museum who is working on restoring our Martini-Henri shells.

Hover your mouse over each photo to see what it is all about.