An archaeologist has returned to the site of a 19th century Chinese settlement in Arrowtown, 40 years after it inspired his lifelong passion as a young teenager.
Department of Conservation (DOC) senior heritage advisor Matt Schmidt is leading a team hoping to unearth secrets from the 120-year-old settlement, located just a stone's throw from the main street.
"Archaeology is a tool to understand the life of people, and it's all about people," Schmidt told Seven Sharp.
"It's all about the story and having something physical is just part of it."
At its peak, around 60 people lived on the site, which boasted 10 mud or stone huts, a social hall and two stores.
The last of the goldminers to live at the settlement, Ah-Gum, died in 1932.
In 1983, the site was excavated for the first time, inspiring a then-14-year-old Schmidt.
Visitors have been free to wander over the area since 1988, leading to decades of dust and debris reburying some of the ruins.
"We're just working down to reveal the floor that's sort of been buried over the last 40 years," DOC senior heritage advisor Tom Barker explained.
"It's pretty cool when you get to see these surfaces that people came and went, and went through the trials of daily life in a pretty cold little gulley."
Among the items discovered by the team are a handmade nail, a piece of old metal sticking out of a tree trunk, a lamb bone, and fragments from a rice bowl and beer bottle.
"It gives you a little insight into day-to-day life here," Schmidt said.
Anything unearthed is taken to the nearby Lakes District Museum.
Barker said the settlement offers a glimpse into the struggles faced by the miners, many of whom arrived in Arrowtown from China, leaving their families behind.
"It does give you an insight to those lives back then and a deeper sympathy and understanding," he said.
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