This week, Roy and I decided to head up to Newcastle again, to visit a site which we didn't know about until recently, the Convict Lumber Yard and Stockade. Newcastle is well known for its industrial past and heritage, and for convict settlement, but this site was one of the first to have been settled in the area, in 1801. If you would like to visit, it is on Scott Street in Newcastle.
Newcastle was, from 1801 until 1822, a place where convicts were sent if they had committed a second crime, as a type of punishment. The site of the lumber yard was first used by Convicts in 1801, and although life was perhaps not quite as hard as it is sometimes made out, convict life was hard and monotonous. In the lumber yard the convicts were mustered, or called into one area to make sure none had run away, four times a day. Food rations were even less than convicts received in Sydney, and were really insufficient to keep the convicts healthy. They worked hard and very long hours. On weekdays they were first mustered together at 5am, and their last muster was at 8pm. They truly worked from 'dawn till dusk'. On Saturdays they worked a half day and Church on Sundays was a must. If you would like to learn more about Convict settlement at the Lumber Yard, click here.
Today, the Lumber Yard is truly a 'buried treasure'. There are lots of remains left from the time of the convicts on the site, including a drain, a kiln floor, a sump, a well, parts of the convict barracks, bricks from the collapsed hospital and brick paths. These remains are all still there, but you won't see them above ground, though the well has a clear covering over it so you can still see it. There are 'skeleton' sculptures showing where the remains and buildings once stood, so you can get a feel for the site, but the real remains are hidden below. So, how do we know they are there at all?
In 1987, and then in 1989 and 1992 the site of the Convict Lumber Yard was excavated (dug up) as part of archaeological investigations. In an archaeological excavation, the soil is carefully removed from a site, to allow experts to investigate what lies under the modern level. These types of investigations are done all over the world, and often there are lots of layers to investigate. You might think that archaeologists simply dig straight down to the layer they are interested in, finding out what they wanting to know without bothering about what happened in the layers above. This isn't usually the case though! Especially when investigations are being carried out on a site which has different histories, each is investigated one at a time, the findings are recorded and only then do the archaeologists move down to the next layer. This is particularly important in sites which date back for hundreds of years, like those in Europe or Egypt. Even more 'recent' sites, like the Lumber Yard are still carefully excavated, ensuring all the different periods and layers of occupation (people using the site) are found and recorded. There were signs of Aboriginal settlement, as well as the Convict occupation at the lumber yard site. There was also evidence and remains from the period when the site was used by the Railways. After the excavations were complete, the site was covered up again to protect it, from the weather and from people.
If you would like to learn more about archaeological excavations click here. You might also like to visit the Time Team site and/or watch a few episodes of the show. Time Team shows the process of an archaeological dig, done over three days, usually in England. Click here to visit their site. You can even do your own 'Interactive Time Team' dig, by clicking here and choosing 'Interactive Time Team'.