Thursday, August 14, 2014

DARWIN, AUSTRALIA—ABC News reports that a rare nineteenth-century stairway has been exposed in Darwin, a city with only five intact structures surviving from the Victorian era. Archaeologist Karen Martin-Stone was called in to investigate the site after workers building a fence discovered the edge of the steps. "The original staircase was quite decorative, and was capped with beautiful concrete," says Martin-Stone. "There is a moulded cavity in the concrete wall at the middle of the stairs, which may have been for the base of a lamp post." She also notes that metal railway sleepers and rail track were incoporated into the stairway's construction. Known as "Lover's Walk," the pathway was closed in 1918, apparently much to the dismay of some of the town's then tiny population, which stood at around 3,600 in 1911. "We very rarely see nineteenth century remains," says heritage official Michael Wells. His office is considering doing more digging around the site to locate a lime kiln that is known to have been somewhere near the staircase.