Led by Sean Winter the team has been hard at work painstakingly excavating trenches in order to find the original layout of the depot buildings and evidence of the way convicts lived on a day to day basis.

Sean is a PhD student and the findings from the dig will be used in his final thesis.

Sean said it had been a very successful field study at their open day last Thursday.

“ In two weeks we have obtained a really good picture of the commissariat building (a government administration building associated with the depot) and have found brick flooring believed to be the barracks where the convicts were housed,” Sean said.

“The size and materials correspond with the historical record written by John Acton Wroth”.

JA Wroth was a convict who served as Clerk of Works when the depot was being built and his poignant life story is told inside the museum.

Despite having to work in soaring temperatures sometimes nearing 50 degrees, the team all agreed the project had been great fun and extremely worthwhile.

The open day attracted over 50 visitors, mainly local residents and some who had driven from Perth.

Members of the archaeological team were pleased to have people ask questions and show interest in what had been found.

Highlights among the artefacts uncovered included fragments of convict era clay pipes, black glass bottles, nails, leatherwork and an object, which may possibly be a convict love token.

These will all be analysed and in due course returned to the museum.

“It was also great that people came along and gave us relevant information, like the lady who lived on the site as a child, and another who provided details of her convict relatives that had been stationed here,” Sean said.