UQ students help preserve Queensland's past

There was no rest for 30 of the University of Queensland's archaeology and history students as they spent their recent vacation helping preserve the history of Queensland's wicked past.

The students teamed up with rangers and historians from the Department of Environment and Heritage (DEH), to spend a week excavating and cataloguing more than 700 artefacts on St Helena Island National Park, a former penal colony in Moreton Bay.

Their work will result in a museum, to be opened later this year, in the restored deputy superintendent's quarters on the island.

DEH project organiser and former archaeology lecturer at the University Dr Judith Powell said the collaboration between State Government, the University of Queensland and Queensland Museum should be a model for future conservation efforts in the state.

The artefacts, some of which had been stored from previous expeditions, were catalogued, photographed, registered, labelled and stored by students from the Classics and Ancient History, Anthropology and Sociology, and History Departments.

Among them were prison workshop tools, farming implements, cemetery crosses, cannonballs and personal items. Most have not been on public view before and all have now been digitally photographed for inclusion on a CD-ROM for research purposes.

Dr Powell said the week had offered the students both professional and academic development, and the experience of being on an excavation.

'They dealt with camping, mosquitoes, cooking for a crowd, sharing facilities, getting on together, and sometimes no hot water," she said.

"Their workplace, a big marquee, blew down in the first week. If you can deal with all that, then you are on your way to being an archaeologist.

"All the students were grateful for the practical experience in cultural heritage issues, and their help means that St Helena's artefact storage problems have been substantially solved."

Ranger Jenise Blaik, a Natural Systems and Wildlife Management graduate from the University's Gatton College, agreed the students had done "a fantastic job".

"We couldn't have done all this work without their help," she said.

St Helena, a prison from 1867 until 1932, is one of the most significant historic sites near Brisbane. The state's first Historic National Park, its ruins are a popular destination for day trippers and school groups.

For further information contact DEH information officer Andrea Dobbyn (telephone 3227 8868).