Open Day photos

Head over to the Gallery/Open day and Events Tab (Click image below) and see the latest photos from the last Open Day conducted by the Flinders University and the Friends of Willow Court.

An estimated 200-300 people visited the site with most taking advantage of the four Tour Guides who took people through thematic tours of the Barracks and Carlton yard. Once in the yard the visitors were told of the current archaeology activity and what was being found.

Inside the Barracks there was a display of previously found and restored items, mostly from the Pearce Collection, along with interpretive posters of items found under the Barracks during previous digs.

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Flinders University Blog site

Keep up to date on all things Archeology from Flinders University at Willow Court field school by subscribing to their student blog site. Each students writes about their experiences and the work they were involved in, discovering the hidden history of the site. Information that links the past to real people can be read here along with photos of articles and finds that inspire a student of Archeology and passionate enthusiast alike.

Each year the field school return to Australia’s oldest continually run hospital for the feeble minded and the invalid alike. The history is buried deep in our convict past, even the first staff were taken from the convict population, which set the site up for a brutal past history unlike asylums that were created for the free settler population.

Each year the work is more in depth and requires a lot more activity and equipment as the momentum builds toward a dig site.

The Derwent Valley Council should be congratulated on this partnership and it’s the sort of professional activity and development that is needed on the site. Based on the findings, tour groups can hear about real science based hypothesis that either supports or tells a different story to our already expanding written literature.

From this the best thematic interpreted tours and stories can be developed over the next ten years while the University use the site for their field school.

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Picture of the Students working at marking out a grid before doing a Geophysics survey.

(c) Copyright 2015 mark krause.

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Communication system

The old communication system at Willow Court is a mess of wire and broken bakelite phones on the floor of the Barracks. It’s been a busy job going through the bits and pieces for archaeology investigation. What to keep and what to discard? Can anyone remember these being in place?

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