A builder’s surprise discovery of an old, dirty boot while trying to fix a cracking wall at the Anglesea Barracks in Hobart has led to a treasure trove of colonial artefacts being uncovered.

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The builder was inspecting the foundations of the Officers’ Mess building after a crack was discovered in an interior wall when he stumbled across the boot under the floor, said Defence Environment and Sustainability Manager Kate Hibbert.

“I was going about my business in my office one day, and a builder who had been working underneath the mess came in with an old, dirty boot and put it on my desk,” she said.

“I said, ‘What have we got here, what are you doing?’ And he said that he’d just been under the mess and he’d found that and a large number of other ones. Then on closer inspection, it was a very, very old dirty boot.”

The boot was, in fact, around 200 years old. It was the first of around 1,800 artefacts found in the 0.5-metre-high space underneath the floor.

“[We found] lots of boots and shoes, and parts of boots and shoes, lots of material from red coats — so very early colonial military uniforms — and lots of convict material as well, which is really interesting,” Dr Hibbert said.

“The size of the find is really unusual; the way organic material breaks down in the environment means we don’t usually find this sort of stuff very often.

“We find metal or other artefacts like that, but things like leather and material break down, so it’s unusual to find this volume of well-preserved artefacts of this type.”

Find ‘of national significance’

Archaeologist Jennifer Jones-Travers was called in to help after the boot was discovered, and said the haul was a “really amazing find”.

“We get called a lot of times to look at an old boot that someone has found, but so rarely has it led to anything like this,” she said.

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“In assessing the site for its research value and rarity specifically, it is of national significance. It’s an amazing resource.”

She said the site was likely a cobbler’s and tailor’s workshop before the barracks building was built in 1827.

Despite the many period TV shows, not a lot is known about how people were dressed in the early colonial days, she said, and there are fewer than 100 pieces of clothing from that era on display in Australia by public collections.

“Having the ability to see so many bits of textile, how they were really making use of whatever resources they had, was really just so exciting.”

The items will all be catalogued and will be stored at the barracks museum. 

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