Day 5

The very last day of excavation, and we were on a tight schedule to remove the whole pit down to the same level by midday. Friday's crew included: Jon Prangnell, Tam Smith, Kevin Rains, Alex Wisniowiecka, Sarah Lewis, Michelle Langley, Kate Shepherdson, Andrew Mills, Chantelle Ollett, Griffith Young, Margaretha Vlahos and Robert Speechley.

Our plan of attack for the morning was to remove the rest of XU11 from the eastern half of the site down to at least 75cm, where our targeted anomaly was suspected to lie. Given our time constraints, the team began to excavate with enthusiasm, employing geological picks and trowels to shift the dirt and embedded artefacts. Again we were coming across glass, rusted cans, and twisted metal, but thankfully, there were far fewer pieces, which made sieving somewhat easier for the crew. At midday we had excavated to almost 1m at the very eastern side of the site, and opened the rest of the area down to about 80cm. Then it was time to record the levels we had reached, and take our final photographs. The very last task was to draw the stratigraphic profiles of each of the four walls, which is a record of each different layer and how thick they are across the site. This is an important record for later analysis of a site. At 2:00pm Brisbane City Council workers came to fill in our site and re-bitumen the area, so we left the area exactly as we found it!

By the end of the day we felt that our objectives for the week had been fulfilled, and we are very pleased with the results that we have achieved. The anomalies that were detected by the ground penetrating radar were investigated; however, they were not the rifles that are believed to be located here. What we have found within the site instead was a rubbish area dating from the time of army occupation, with some of the material believed to date back to the 1950s. There was a lot of evidence of past activities at the site, and it was really interesting to find such a wealth of material.

Thank you to all of the volunteers who have given up their time this week; your help was invaluable. We are really thankful also to all of the visitors and interest that the excavation has attracted. Thanks to Brian Sinclair from the Brisbane City Council Heritage Unit for organising aspects of the excavation; Christine Ianna from the Queensland Museum for her work conserving the artefacts; and to Sean Ulm from the University of Queensland for constructing this website! All efforts have been greatly appreciated. It has been an excellent week and we hope that all involved have enjoyed themselves, as well as learnt something from the experience.

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