Identification
 Bottle:
  Dating 
  Colours 
  Bases 
  Tops 
  Common 
  Cleaning 

China Town Bottle Dig

   

It was new years eve and before I had cracked my first beer, I sat if front of the phone trying to work out who would be mad enough to get up at the crack of dawn on New Years Day and smash concrete for a couple of hours in 40C heat. I didn’t have to think about it too long, Robin was always keen for a dig under any conditions.

So I give him a call, I told him that I had found a site the only problem was the original buildings floor was still intact ‘the concrete’, this did not seem to faze Robin so we made arrangements for the morning.

We arrived at the site at about 7.00am and found a suitable looking slab of cement and proceeded to break it up with sledge hammers, the concrete was quite thick and has about half inch reinforcing steel through it so it was tough going for a while.

Under the concrete we find there is a layer of scrap tin about four inches thick that had rusted together, this was just like another layer of concrete, but we managed to get through this with a little help from my friend Mr Crowbar and swearing a lot. It was hard digging although it was not very deep only about 4 and a half feet or so, and it was solid clay all the way down. By now there was a lot of broken black glass and pottery coming to light and as this was a very early site around the mid 1840’s from my research, even the broken stuff was interesting. But broken bottles can only hold your interest for so long, it was stinking hot around 45C (104F for you Americans out there) we had smashed about 10 square feet of concrete and dug a hole to match and not one whole bottle had come out.




Robin had begun to pick on my parentage, “I thought you new how to find bottles” I heard a dehydrated Robin mumble over my shoulder when I had the first find of the day, it was a bread plate with a nice English underglaze transfer stamp on the back. I was pretty excited by this as it was 4.30pm in the afternoon by now and a plate is better than nothing. “My turn”, said Robin, and jumped it the hole, after ten minutes he pops up with a grin on his face “number two” he said and handed me a clear three piece mould castor oil.

I got back in the hole now and scratched around and pretty soon the lip of a cheese jar popped out, after digging it out I said “you turn”, but Robin didn’t look to impressed as we were both pretty stuffed by now, but in he went. Dug out some more clay smashed some more concrete and kept moving forward, a bit more broken black glass. My turn again after another ten minutes I find the top of a bottle poking out of the clay, “I’ve got a pickle bottle here and it has a few mates behind it “ I said, with that I had robin in the hole behind me doing a bit of back seat digging, I ran my finger down the side of the bottle and felt a lip which I thought was a break in the bottle and it had over lapped. It’s broken I said and proceeded to belt it with my fork, well Robin went nuts “NO It’s Not” he yelled from behind me “dig it out properly” he said, being a little intimidated by this un-seen side of Robin I did what I was told. Out came a Violin Pickles bottle with British registration diamond on the base, “there’s more in here” I said and handed him a Ginger Beer, then another, then a ring seal beer, another Ginger Beer








“My Turn My Turn” Robin said and just about lifted me out of the hole, he starts handing me Ginger Beers straight away then an odd looking 26oz Porter bottle, a Cognac bottle no two, more Ginger Beers, a nice white Marmalade Jar with underglaze transfer, another Ring seal beer, well you get the general idea. I believe we hit a dunny hole that was about three feet wide and four feet deep and full of bottles.

We got twenty-four whole bottles, one plate and about forty of these Ginger Beers with the tops knocked off. I call the stone bottles Ginger Beers but they could easily have been Ale, Beer or Porter bottles but they look like the Goldfields Ginger Beers we get here.

I was a fairly large site and we went back a few other times and usually found a few more of the Ginger Beers, and a lot of other collectors had discovered the site by now and there was a lot of bottles found.

The site was in China Town in Melbourne and from my research at a later date there seemed to be a tent city on the site in the 1830’s and 1840’s with a number of sly grog shanties where I believe most of the bottles would have come from.