DAY ONE – LANCEFIELD DIG
Hello Everyone and a huge, warm welcome from a very warm Lancefield, Victoria.
Today marks the beginning of a week long adventure of epic proportions featuring the combined superpowers of the Deakin University Palaeontology crew, the Latrobe University Archeology crew, Monash University Earth, Atmosphere and Environment crew, and the Federation University Palynologist crew (Cam called them Beeople!). Lancefield is a small Victorian town famous for megafauna, which means that Lancefield is a small Victorian town famous for it’s capacity to host lots of lots of scientists who regularly descend on it to dig megafauna! And it’s so much fun……
This week we are opening up a series of trenches in the swamp region of Lancefield to see what can be found! With over 20 volunteers involved, it has fallen upon me to co-manage the dig site (the other site manager being the ever capable, and much more experienced, Cam), and considering I’ve never managed a dig site, nor never actually attending a paleo dig before (I only found out megafauna were not in fact dinosaurs last year!) I think I may have bitten off a bit more than I can chew (get that – I did a funny there! Because megafauna are big and have a big bite…….yeah……never mind!).
So, having helped organised the dig, as well as helping to organise the volunteers while they are digging, I, of course, roped my long-suffering parents into helping, and with a lot of bribery, and some strategically well left-out information, they agreed to help cater for 20 hungry volunteers for the week. Ever vigilant of my charges welfare, I also organised a Port-a-loo to be on site at the dig site, thus alleviating the need for the discreet pee-behind-a-bush scenario which always ends in tears. This will be going down in the history of paleo-digs as being the classiest paleo dig EVER!
It was with this in mind, that Dad and I set off after lunch to retrieve the said Port-a-loo from the council depot in Woodend using my Long-Suffering Mentor’s work vehicle. Having found the compound, hooked the loo up to the car, and managed to negotiate our way through the automatic exit gates, we proceeded down the highway towards Lancefield, paying extra attention to maintaining speed and integrity of Long-Suffering Mentor’s work vehicle. It was around 10 minutes down the road that I became away of a significant swaying movement in my rear end (the car people! THE CAR!) and having mentioned it to Dad (That sounds EVEN WORSE!) was reminded that I did, in fact, have a derelict crapper attached to the car I was driving. Watching the said derelict crapper swaying back and forth in the revision mirror, was, I can honestly say, one of the scariest things I have ever seen! With much gesticulating, whilst trying to drive, and stop the said derelict crapper from swaying back and forth, and squealing like a girl, I had visions of the crapper tumbling off the back of the trailer and turning head over arse along the road, spraying every manner of disgusting matter in all directions, not to mention facing the angry wrath of a bunch of unhappy volunteers whose teeth were floating while waiting for me to get back with the dunny!
So, I slowed down, took my time, and was surprised at how few people tailgated me!
Upon arriving at the dig site, I drove proudly in to determine the flattest location for the crapper, to hear some bright spark yell out “Shitters Full!” I then proceeded to forget to remove the trailer from the car, almost causing me to upend the crapper after all when shooting forward by absently placing my foot on the accelerator rather than the brake. And THEN Dad had to remind me to put chocks behind the crapper’s wheels to prevent it wheeling off down the incline with some poor person trapped inside screaming. Just a worksafe court case waiting to happen……
So, I have no idea if they found anything at the dig site today. Hopefully tomorrow I will get to see something!