Richard Mackay: We’re near the centre of the former German Garden, and what have we got coming up, guys?
La Trobe student: It’s like a bit of a pipe.
Richard Mackay: It’s a sort of metal feature, more likely to be a drainage pipe or a water pipe than a pirate’s cannon, I guess, that’s probably right!
And what’s the deposit on top here, this sort of black gooey stuff?
La Trobe student: We think this is probably the fill.
Richard Mackay: OK, so probably a sort of clay levelling fill that was brought in here, underneath and prior to the 1880 German Garden.
Geoff Hewitt: This piece of iron here was directly on the centre line of the building, that may have been some architectural feature of the garden. Its alignment with the ‘pirate cannon’ found in the previous trench suggests perhaps that it’s more to do with the garden irrigation than the garden architecture. Of course, we will need to further excavate to be certain what it is we’re looking at, and the possibility remains that it is indeed part of the 1880 garden.
Richard Mackay: It could be, if it connects up with what’s possibly a water pipe up here, it could be part of a garden edge or railing or fence, as well as some kind of pipe, so that will be revealed, I guess, over coming days.