Over 15,000 old bottles and other artifacts found in ballarat

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Not sure of the legalities of cut and pasting the whole story here,so i will put the link up to the story.
This has been going on for a week or two ,but there is a construction site around the civic hall in ballarat in the process
of building a GOVHUB ,which includes moving the Vicroads main office from Melbourne to there.
Workers have started digging up what sounds like valuable and possibly important archaeological finds and the more they dig,the more that turns up.
So far ,apparently ,they have unearthed about 15,000 bottles and recently found old artifacts.
Anyway , here is the full story from Saturday`s local paper , The Ballarat Courier.

https://www.thecourier.com.au/story...opped-following-discovery-of-artefacts/?cs=62
 
Incredible. God knows how many rare and informative artifacts the idiots have smashed already.
That clear torpedo shaped bottle in the middle with the broken neck is the type that the early miners used to tie a string to and then use as a plumb-bob when they wanted to keep their mineshafts or other structures true and vertical.
 
It will be interesting to see what happens from here. It is a big project and finding stuff like this could lead to all sorts of legal and moral issues with the heritage significance of the site and possibly a sacred Aboriginal site.

I used to work directly across the road from this place and for years i parked my car in the car park they are digging up. There are tunnels in the area as well ,but no word on if they have run into any ,yet.
The Aboriginal Co-op is across the road and i would suggest they will be very much keeping an eye on all this.

FOZ
 
Sorry , Wishfull.

I don`t understand the wording of the question.

Do you want to know the history of the area they are digging up ?

FOZ
 
No worries , Wishfull.

I only know a little bit because i have only been living and working in the ballarat area for 15 years.

Have a read of this https://savecivichall.org/history/ . Anne is our top historian and explains this very well.

The area was a stockmarket area ( Hence , Market street is only 30 yards away ) and the building i worked in across the road was previously a produce, petrol and general goods merchant by the name of A.W. Hancock, back in the day. At the back of that was a stockmarket , Irwin`s had a row of buildings on Lydiard street north directly behind Hancocks with hotels and hardware stores going north up to the railway tracks ,with Ludbrook House being one of those buildings and i believe that was where returning ww1 soldiers stayed on their way home and on the other side of the road next to the railway station was Reid`s coffee palace , i think they called it and now that is Reid`s guest house , a temporary accommodation place. Along that row of buildings were various pubs with deep cellars and other businesses. Gollars is one and still stands there,but not in use. I have been in the very back of one of the businesses next to Gollars and have seen one entrance to the underground tunnels that run behind all those buildings. Apparently a tunnel runs all the way along from Reid`s guest house and under all those businesses on Lydiard street and right down Mair street towards Bakery Hill where the Eureka Stockade was staged. 3 blocks south along Lydiard street past the mining exchange and old post office ,you get to the old jail ,which is now one campus of the Fed Uni. This was where the old jail was and there is a tunnel that goes from the jail to the courthouse down the hill to escort prisoners without fear of escape. Only a hundred yards north of there ,as the crow flies is the old Camp street Halls of Justice Police building ,now another Fed Uni campus and i`ll bet there is a tunnel from there to the courts ,too. I don`t honestly know. There is also a tunnel straight down the guts of the main street ( Sturt street ) filled with old shops and the council was going to let the public in to view them in tours, but turned around and decided against it. Bugger. Remember there would not be much air in there and setting it up to let tourists in might well damage a part of history.
Now , All these tunnels may join up at some point or various points and i don`t know how far up the hill they go or if they go west from Lydiard street towards the Civic a Hall site , so where the Civic Hall is , it is reasonably flat ground and was Crown land before The Alfred Hall . Being in an area of a great many hotels , a stockmarket and businesses and only 70 yards from Ludbrook House where the soldiers were , i wonder if it was an old dumping site . I might try to find out more during the week.
I have some of this info in books and will try to dig it up to post it here. I couldn`t find it this morning, but will endeavour to do so.

Sorry if i got sidetracked . Please correct me if my info is not quite right and other would have more knowledge than i do on Ballarat.

FOZ
 
Thanks , Jaros. I forgot to mention the Peter Lalor Hotel ( named after the leader of the Eureka rebellion ) is on the opposite side of the street to the civic hall. It is now known as the pub with two names due to the fact that when it changed hands a couple of years` ago, the owners stripped the facade back to reveal the original name on the brickwork which is The Royal Highlander.
They have left the name there , in the condition it was found. See pics ,below. The Civic Hall is the brown building on the left of the first picture .with the trees in front of it.

The word on the street is it may well have been a tip ,as i alluded to earlier ,but questions are being asked as to whether an archaeological survey should have been conducted before they even started.
Apart from the cache of bottles, they have also uncovered ceramics, leather remnants and other material dating back to early Ballarat times.
The fact that they were picked through by collectors and alot of the remains sent to recycling , they say it is a breach of the Heritage Act 2017.

Getting interesting .now.



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FOZ
 
One of my properties in the GT was covered in test holes and mulloch heaps.
History tell me the local chemist shop used a few of them as a tip.
They were bulldozed flat in the 50's.
I'll find out what's under there next year when I build a new house on it.
First thing will be the excavation for an underground water tank.
 
Soil testing on that property might some yield interesting readings ,

You never know what chemicals were dumped there .

FOZ
 
the amount of times iv gone into these old areas looking for old bottles, especially torpedo bottles, and found nothing but smashed ones, and these idiots are just sticking them in the bin makes me jealous and angry at the same time. ill have to come up at some stage and get a look at the site before they cover it all over again.
 
No worries, Mackka.

I go back to work next week and if i don`t find out anymore before then , i`ll ask 3 old timers who are customers of mine who have run and worked in family businesses that have been going since the goldrush days. One particular bloke worked in the old Phoenix Foundry as a kid and his knowledge of all things Ballarat is phenomenal .
If anyone knows about the Civic hall site`s history ,it`s him.

FOZ
 
Yep. They have effectively stopped work on it. I went down there this morning and took a few pics of the site.
There were only about 3 blokes there ,so there wassn`t much going on at all.

Don`t know why the pics went sideways. Sorry. I can`t fix it.


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FOZ
 
so im assuming they have broken into a cellar/tunnel as apart of the excavation?
all of those bottles in the soil doesn't make much sense to me
 

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