Archaeologists dig for documents constable buried about 40 years ago
A constable was ordered to burn old documents four decades ago. He chose to bury them instead.
Forty years ago, Constable Edward Robb worked at Mount Larcom police station in central Queensland. Robb was ordered to burn old documents but chose to bury them in the station yard instead.
Now a museum curator and an archaeologist are digging to find them. The papers might hold evidence of police wrongdoing under Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
They could contain records from German detention during the world wars. They might show accounts of frontier killings.
Or they could just be daily station records. Robb worked alone at the station during the 1980s and kept the secret until he died.
Dr Caitlin D'Gluyas says finding disturbed ground could show if the documents survived. The team is searching trenches in the dusty yard.
They are looking for the metal marker Robb supposedly placed over the buried papers.
Why it mattersThe buried documents could show hidden parts of Queensland's past. They might reveal facts about government failures or frontier violence, but only if the team can find them.
AustraliaQueensland police history and potential government wrongdoing during the 1980s may be revealed by this excavation.
✓ Claims checked against the source and corrected before publish. checked 2 h ago
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