We are continuing with our fall edition of Thirty-One Days of Time Team with a flashback to season two.
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Why is there a pagan figure buried in a church?  Time Team is on the case!  They are in the heart of the Wiltshire countryside and the Time Team is here to solve a riddle.  There were no known Roman Rules in the area, except for this figure in a church.  Victor Ambrus sketches it while Tony reads an explanation for the statue.  Why is this statue on the wall?  Was this the site of an earlier pagan settlement?  You do not want to miss this episode of the Time Team.

The Time Team begins taking core samples of the ground surrounding the church and will do geophysics of the site.  Will there be walls found on the site?  Did the Romans build something on an earlier site?  Was this site considered a holy site to the pagan people?  Was this a sacred spring?  There could be years of ritual history buried in the pond? 

The Time Team heads to the archives.  Carenza discovers that there was a possible Roman site in the village and immediately tells Tony the good news.  Maybe the Time Team will have to search to a field outside the village.  In the field, there were Roman tiles discovered.  Will the Time Team be on the verge of discovering a temple?  Tony catches up with Robin and Victor to explore the possibilities of what this temple looked like.

One local farm discovered Roman remains while plowing.  He meets up with Carenza to field walk.  He would like to know more in order to not damage any additional finds.  Carenza is convinced that there is something in the field and rushes to get the geophysics team.  They have to finish up with the church before they go to the field.  Tony and Robin catch up and examine maps of the field over the decades.  Robin wants to come up with a master plan of the area to hand over to future generations.  The geophysics team starts working in the field.

Mick and Tony then meet up with an expert in Roman Statues to see what the statue was that is embedded in a church wall.  Did this statue come from a temple?  Or was this statue found in a household?  Does this seem to change things for the Time Team?  The Geophysics results on the field are showing promise.  There was something in the field.  So, the Time Team view the evidence that was found by the farmers.  Masonry, wall plaster, roofing tiles, and coins were discovered in the field.

The geophysics team will work late into the night to map the field.  The Time Team gathers and discusses what was found.  Mick believes that there is a villa on the site.  Day Two kicks off with the geophysics results.  This is the moment of truth for the Time Team and the results are good.  There is evidence of ditches and squares hinting at a massive complex underneath.  It is clear that something is in the field.  More results are coming in and it looks like there was a potential villa on the site.  It would the first villa found in the area.  The Time Team now faces some challenges before they start to dig.  Will Time Team find a villa in the ground?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out!

This would be an excellent episode to show for a history class.  There was a good debate on whether or not they should dig the site because of the geophysics results which could lead to some good discussions about archeology. 

Good morning, the Thirty-One days of Time Team continue with a search for the real-life Flintstones.
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Time Team is hot on the trail a place where there is evidence of human settlement dating back to the Stone Age.  Stone Age England was a very different place.  It was covered in lush greenery.  Lions, rhinos, and elephants wandered around.  The Dig is in a clay pit that dates back from the Victorian period.  In the pit, there is an area where Stone Age tools were found.  It is a site that dates back to 400,000 years ago and the Time Team is working with the British Museum.

Phil and Nick Ashton have started the dig and are finding good evidence of people making flints and tools along with a rule.  This site is rare for the Time Team.  Tony asks if they will find human remains on the site and Phil says they will not.  One of the Time Team’s tasks will be to find the plants that the Stone Age people lived with.  Tony then learns that environmental archeologists use vole teeth to date a site.

Carenza is at a site five miles away from the initial trench and the Time Team will excavate another area where there were Stone Age Remains found.  It was an archeological area that has not been excavated lately.  They will have to clear some foliage first before the second trench goes in.

In the first trench, a piece of hand ax is found, and Phil is ecstatic with the find.  They slowly dig around the dirt to free it and it comes out of the ground.  The hand ax was the single most important tool for the Stone Age Man.  Geophysics will be working to find an ancient river that ran through the landscape.  It will take time to build a picture of the landscape.  Finding the river will help archeologists look for additional Stone Age sites.  Stewart is field walking the area and looking for archeology on the surface.

Day One ends on a rainy note, the trench is covered to prevent a mud hole and the archeology continues.  The work to find plant material continues despite the rain.  In fact, a mussel shell was found while digging and would hint at something being preserved.  Clay is put into buckets and hydrogen peroxide is added to dissolve the clay leaving behind organic material.

Day Two kicks off with Phil working to make a stone tool.  He tries to try it out by chopping down a tree. Geophysics continues with their search for the ancient river.  It will take yards and yards of cord and avoiding man-made features to find this ancient river.  In Carenza’s trench, they are finding some interesting finds.  Carneza calls for Tony to bring an intact ax head and Phil.  The environmental trench is struggling to break down the clay to determine what organic material was around during the time of the Stone Age.  Victor paints a scene of life at the riverbank.  What was life for these people?  Tony meets up with a computer graphic artist to see what the people looked like.  What will the Time Team find?  Will they find that elusive whole hand ax?  Will they find the remains of an ancient river channel?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more about the Stone Age people of Britain.

This would be something interesting to show a landscape class because of the environmental archaeology involved with the Time Team’s search.  It would be a good episode to help teach about experimental archeology as well.

We are continuing with our Thirty-One Days of Time Team and we are throwing it back to the past with an episode from Season 3 and a prehistoric Fogou.

Tony is roaming a tunnel under a garden, what was it doing there?  Who built it?  What was it used for?  The Tunnel is a feature in the center of a garden.  The Garden belongs to Jo and Tony meets up with him and Robin.  They talk about the feature and a map of the garden.  This map was drawn up by an antiquarian.  The trio walks around the site.  There seems to hint at another tunnel.  What will the Time Team discover about this feature?

Can the Time Team find the other tunnel?  Can they find the site of the Iron Age settlement associated with the fogou?  The site is now home to the 19th Century.  The Time Team will not be able to dig at the fogou itself because it is a protected site.  Jo had dowsers on the property and they said that there was a second tunnel.  Mick is skeptical and will wait for the geophysics results.

The geophysics results hint at something curving that joins up with the fogou.  What was the purpose of the fogou, that remains a mystery?  Were they a place of refuge?  A tunnel to escape warring armies?  Or were they just used for storage?  Mick and Tony explore the fogou and examine the tunnel carefully.  There were ten fogous discovered in Cornwall and they were near rivers.  There were more fogous discovered in Brittany and they are even more numerous in numbers.  In Ireland, there were 1,000 fogous discovered.

However, the big question looming over Time Team, will they find more of a fogou.  Trench One goes in and immediately a water pipe is discovered.  Mick and Phil give the geophysics team a hard time about discovering a pipe.  Tony catches up with Mick and Phil.  He brings out a map that the water dowsers drew.  The water dowser hints at a different location for the tunnel extension.  Mick is skeptical about water dousing.  Phil recommends that the water dowser goes over the land again.  Tony tries out water dousing.  Mick agrees to put in a “new age trench” in the ground.

Victor works on a drawing of the enclosed settlement and Robin, Jo, Carenza, and a local archeologist work with him on the drawing.  The Time Team is hoping to find evidence of settlement.  The dowsers’ trench is coming up empty as well.  Mick makes the call to put in another test trench to see if any additional evidence can be discovered.  The Time Team plans on looking at the landscape to see where they can look for the fogou extension. Is the extension under the house?

At night, the Time Team gets together for a sum up and the only trench that seems to show promise is Carenza’s trench which was dug over the wall of a potential enclosure.  It was the one area of the property that was not disturbed when the house was built.  So her trench is an extension and an Iron Age pot piece is discovered.  Will this pot hint at an Iron Age settlement?  What would a settlement look like during this period?  What would the people have done? 

Will Time Team find additional hints of settlement?  Is another fogou on the verge of being discovered?  Will Mick get over his feelings against water dowsing?  Will Phil be turned into a tin miner?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out.
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As frustrating as it was at the start of the episode, the Time Team turned it around and managed to find additional evidence about the history of the fogou.  The section on Tin Making was fascinating and Phil was delighted with his efforts in making tin.  This would be a good episode to show for a fun day.

A Thirteenth-Century of portrait of Christ was found in an outhouse in a village founded by the Templars.  Time Team aims to find out more about the village they discovered and more about the Templars themselves.  A modern-day Knights Templar member invited the Time Team to learn more about his house.   Tony Robinson meets up with Mick Robinson to determine the area where the Time Team will dig.
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The Templars started as a monastery with walls and a gatehouse.  The home where they settled has undergone many renovations over the years.  A historic buildings expert joins up with the Time Team.  The home is in an intriguing “L” shape.  However, it is behind the house on a farm that the Time Team will be investigating.  There was a ditch in a field and may have been a boundary of the monastery.  Mick quickly draws was the monastery site would have looked like and talks about other Templar sites.  He discusses how similar this site compares to other sites.

Time Team starts in on a first trench in the north farm field that seems to hint at a boundary ditch.  Will the Time Team find dating evidence in the ditch?  Tony and Mick catch up with Phil to find out.  There seems to be a hint of a wall in the ditch.  The Time Team has also discovered floor tiles.  So has the Time Team firmly established that this was part of a final boundary?

Robin and Carenza are in the archives and may have found a chapel on the site.  Was it a Medieval Chapel?  The Templars had a chapel in 1309 and even a chapel was mentioned in the Doomsday Book.  So will the Time Team find a Medieval Chapel on the site?

Back at the house, there is an ancient beam discovered.  It is a fireplace mantel and may have been part of the original home for the Templars.  The Time Team brings in a dendrochronologist on site.  Tony is skeptical that the results will be produced in time.  The dendrochronologist assures Tony that the results will be produced in time.

Robin and Tony meet up and talk about the Knights Templar.  The village where the Knight Templar had only three “fighting monks” at once.  Eventually, the village was taken over by the Knights Hospitaller. 

Carenza and Phil continue to investigate the possibility of a chapel on the site.  There was a photograph of a potential chapel that was believed to be from the Middle Ages.  Upon further investigation, there is a doorstep in a wall that seems to hint at the potential of the current wall being a former chapel.   A second trench is being dug at the potential chapel site.

At the end of the night, the Time Team gets together to do a catch-up.  The geophysics results are still incomplete.  So Mick determines that the two trenches will be expanded.  Tony then asks to see when a dendrochronology date will become available.  The dendrochronologist comes in and gives them the date for one of the beams and the tree was chopped down no later than 1610.  So the beam they found was not Templar.  Despite this, there was plenty of other evidence that the site is Templar.

So what will be found in the farmer’s strawberry patch?  What other evidence will be uncovered to tell the story of the Knights Templar in England?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more about the Knights Templar!

This throwback episode was a cool episode to watch, especially seeing how many different experts came together to tell the story of the Knights Templar house and village.  The Village of the Templars would be an episode to show for a fun day in history.

A Thirteenth-Century of portrait of Christ was found in an outhouse in a village founded by the Templars.  Time Team aims to find out more about the village they discovered and more about the Templars themselves.  A modern-day Knights Templar member invited the Time Team to learn more about his house.   Tony Robinson meets up with Mick Robinson to determine the area where the Time Team will dig.

The Templars started as a monastery with walls and a gatehouse.  The home where they settled has undergone many renovations over the years.  A historic buildings expert joins up with the Time Team.  The home is in an intriguing “L” shape.  However, it is behind the house on a farm that the Time Team will be investigating.  There was a ditch in a field and may have been a boundary of the monastery.  Mick quickly draws was the monastery site would have looked like and talks about other Templar sites.  He discusses how similar this site compares to other sites.

Time Team starts in on a first trench in the north farm field that seems to hint at a boundary ditch.  Will the Time Team find dating evidence in the ditch?  Tony and Mick catch up with Phil to find out.  There seems to be a hint of a wall in the ditch.  The Time Team has also discovered floor tiles.  So has the Time Team firmly established that this was part of a final boundary?

Robin and Carenza are in the archives and may have found a chapel on the site.  Was it a Medieval Chapel?  The Templars had a chapel in 1309 and even a chapel was mentioned in the Doomsday Book.  So will the Time Team find a Medieval Chapel on the site?

Back at the house, there is an ancient beam discovered.  It is a fireplace mantel and may have been part of the original home for the Templars.  The Time Team brings in a dendrochronologist on site.  Tony is skeptical that the results will be produced in time.  The dendrochronologist assures Tony that the results will be produced in time.

Robin and Tony meet up and talk about the Knights Templar.  The village where the Knight Templar had only three “fighting monks” at once.  Eventually, the village was taken over by the Knights Hospitaller. 
Carenza and Phil continue to investigate the possibility of a chapel on the site.  There was a photograph of a potential chapel that was believed to be from the Middle Ages.  Upon further investigation, there is a doorstep in a wall that seems to hint at the potential of the current wall being a former chapel.   A second trench is being dug at the potential chapel site.

At the end of the night, the Time Team gets together to do a catch-up.  The geophysics results are still incomplete.  So Mick determines that the two trenches will be expanded.  Tony then asks to see when a dendrochronology date will become available.  The dendrochronologist comes in and gives them the date for one of the beams and the tree was chopped down no later than 1610.  So the beam they found was not Templar.  Despite this, there was plenty of other evidence that the site is Templar.

So what will be found in the farmer’s strawberry patch?  What other evidence will be uncovered to tell the story of the Knights Templar in England?  Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more about the Knights Templar!

This throwback episode was a cool episode to watch, especially seeing how many different experts came together to tell the story of the Knights Templar house and village.  The Village of the Templars would be an episode to show for a fun day in history.

Good morning, we are continuing with the Fall Edition of Thirty-One Days of Time Team with Lords of the Isles.  This is the first episode of season two of the Time Team.  Tony still has his hair, and Phil was in danger of losing his hat!

There was a set of ruins that dominated a kingdom in Scotland for decades.  The Time Team will brave the rain to explore a Scottish Island.  The National Museum of Scotland has partnered with the Time Team to excavate the site.  The Time Team needs to help with this dig because the National Museum will run out of money to fund the dig.  Once the money runs out, there will be no more digs.  What will the Time Team learn about the Lords of the Isles?

Work has immediately started on the dig.  The site contains the mainland, a larger island, and a smaller isle.  The Time Team will look on the island, around the island, and on the mainland.  The Time Team will also look at a mound on the mainland.  This mound is noticeable in the landscape.  Was mound something ceremonial to the Lords of the Isles?  Were their chieftains’ declared chieftains on this mound?

Tony catches up with the National Museum archeologists on site.  There were four years of excavations and have produced hundreds of finds.  The objects found help illustrate how the Lords of the Isles lived.  Scuba divers are looking at the waters around the isles.  They are having a challenge with the peat in the water.  Despite this, the visibility is good for the underwater team.

Next, Tony catches up with Robin to learn more about the phrase “the Lords of Isles.”  Robin tells the story of a petty king who looked at an Island.  He drove the Vikings out of the Island established a kingdom.  They were never called the Lords of the Isles until the 14th Century.  Even then the title was assumed out of the blue.

The waterlogged soil is proving to be a challenge; however, this does not deter Phil from digging.  The Time Team is looking at the guardhouse and the cemetery.  As part of the excavation, the Time Team will reconstruct linen armor.

Mick checks up on Phil in the guardhouse trench.  He walked with Donald MacFayden who is in charge of the MacFayden Trust.  Phil discusses the excavation.  There was a nicely preserved building on the site.  Eventually, the Time Team comes together and does a catch-up of what they are finding.  There have not been many finds and the rain is not helping them.  A second trench goes in at the top of the mound.  Immediately there are finds at the top of the mound.  Does this signify an ancient site?

Day two kicks off at the second trench.  It is windy but some good finds are being discovered.  The site may have been a Mesolithic site.  The second trench will be extended further.  The geophysics team and Stewart Ainsworth work to map out the area.  Was this mound originally an Island?  All is working well.  The newest finds are found in an ancient rubbish dump.  Mick was supposed to help with the underwater archeology, but Tony suits up and participates in the dig.

Mick and Tony go up in a helicopter and look at the landscape.  Mick talks about the beach and the jetties that are in the landscape.  They talk about how well-used the landscape was and how a king or a prince would feel like the landscape would legitimize his rule.
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What will the Time Team continue to discover about the Lords of the Isles?  Will the weather change?  Tune into this episode to find out more.  This would be a good episode to show for a fun Friday history class.

Our Fall Thirty-One Days of Time Team continues with a mystery shipwreck.  Tony Robinson tells the story of a teenage boy who discovered a cannon in the water.  Since then, the teen has grown up and organized a dig of the ship.  Time Team has been brought in to assist with the dig.  What was the mystery wreck?  Was it part of the Spanish Armada?  Will there be enough of the ship remaining for the Time Team to explore?
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This is the first time that the Time Team will participate in water archelogy and there will be plenty to learn.  Will water archeology be different from land archaeology?  The answer is no.  Many of the same principles apply from land archeology apply to water archeology.  The number one thing that is very much the same between both forms of archelogy is that it will take time.  Another time factor for the team is the arrival of the site director from Libya. 

The teen who discovered the site twenty years ago speaks with Tony Robinson about the find.  The teen had grown up and works on the site.  Simon Burton was swimming off the coast when he saw the cannon.  He learned that the cannon was made of bronze and continued to dive the site.  The site was eventually declared protected and licensed.  So, they have a site director now and he guides the work on the site.  The Time Team cannot dive into the site until the site director comes back from Libya. 

There were another five guns and other items found at the site.  Robin Bush and Mick Aston head to the town museum to see if this ship was part of the Spanish Armada.  A copper pot, firepot, a merchant seal, and other cannons were found. Robin looks at the coat of arms on the cannon and Mick suggests that they look into the background of the cannon.  The identity of the wreck could be tied to the coat of arms on the cannon. 

Robin and Mick talk about the certainty of the Armada connection.  There was nothing in the local folklore about the cannon.  Robin and Mick lean towards the ship being a trading vessel.  So, is the ship a merchant galley or a warship? 

Stewart Ainsworth looks at the landscape to see if there was a nearby port.  The French had raided the town burning it to the ground.  However, according to folk legend, buildings may have survived.

The survey results are in and those results are not good.  Nothing shows up in the results.  They were expecting to find pieces of timber in the sand.  The results are disappointing for the Time Team and Simon Burton.  Perhaps the timbers were waterlogged, and thus would not show up in the results?  The results would have helped them put in the trenches.

Day two begins at the breakfast table.  The Time Team goes out to the wreck site and Tony dives on the wreck.   However, since there were some storms last year, the site director and Simon dive on the site to make sure their markers are still there.  After some sorting and repositioning their markers, Tony goes diving.  While Tony dives, Mick learns how to shoot a cannon.

After the markers are positioned and Tony comes up to the surface, the sand sucking starts.  While that is happening, Stewart Ainsworth goes over the landscape results.  At midday, Mick fires the cannon.  In the afternoon, beginner diver Phil Harding takes his turn on the wreck.  At the end of day two, there are no signs of the wreck.  Will the Time Team find the wreck?  Tune into this episode to find out.

This would be a good episode to show for a “Fun Friday.”

Time Team is heading on over to Gateholm Island.  This island is off the coast of Pembrokeshire and a handful of objects have been found over the years.  It is one of the most dangerous and inaccessible places Time Team has ever excavated.  Tony Robinson will have to zipline over to the island.  Did the original inhabitants have an easier way to get to the island?  What will the Time Team discover about the island?  Gateholm is managed by the National Trust and hopes that Time Team will unlock the secrets of the island.

​Gateholm will be a serious challenge for the Time Team.  Every tool and everyone has to travel by zipline to the island.  This will take time and cut into digging time.  The archeologists started digging before Tony arrived on the scene. 

Alex Langlands and Emma Woods examine the results of the geophysics and aerial photographs.  Alex notes that there are rectangular buildings on the island.  Was Gateholm a sacred isle?  Or the site of an early monastery?  Francis Pryor seems to hint at that.  Across from the island, there seem to be hints of a promontory fort.  Phil Harding organizes a field walking team to look at the fort site.  Are there two sites linked together?  As the group field walks, an arrowhead is discovered.  This hints that the site was inhabited over 10,000 years ago.

In the meantime, Francis uses aerial photography to plant his tranches.  To Tony, the trenches seem randomly placed.  Francis is looking for monk cells and a roundhouse.  Mary Ann Ochata looks at what was found on the site.  There was a wide range of artifacts found and hints that the island was occupied from the Mid-Roman period.

A trench goes in on the fort site, after a trip across the island on the zipline.  IN the meantime, on the island, there are some good discoveries.  Pottery was found on the island this will help the Time Team date the site.  In the meantime, Francis and John Gater debate the position of the first trench.  Phil throws a bomb into their plans with evidence of earlier occupation.  The first trench goes in on the fort site.

Alex does some investigating at how the original islanders got on and off the island.  Perhaps, there was a land bridge connecting the island to the mainland.  At the end of day one, the Time Team ziplines back to the mainland.  One of the archeologists brings back a large red bag of fines.  Some of the pottery pieces come from the Roman period.  The evidence seems to hint at Roman settlement.  Are the two sites linked together?

On Day Two, Time Team continues to look for evidence as to why people lived on Gateholm.  The Time Team will be going hard because of the threat of rain.  Trenches will be extended.  Will these trenches reveal evidence of Iron Age settlement and roundhouses?  Francis believes that archeology will prove it.  Domestic life is slowly emerging from the trenches on the fort site.  The forts inhabitants built up high banks to protect from attack.  Would these walls protect the inhabitants inside?  Time Team looks to answer this question.

Will Gateholm Island reveal its secrets? Did people settle on the island before the Roman Empire?  Was there something mystic about the site?  Or was it an early monastic site?  How does the fort tie into the site?  Tune into this episode of Time Team to find out!

This was a good episode because the Time Team faced some challenges with this dig.  This one would be a good episode to show to an archaeology class.

Good morning, we will finish off August with one last Tony Robinson’s Time Travels.  This would be a fun and frivolous series to show in the classroom.  Tony Robinson goes back to 776 BC and looks back to the history of the Olympics in Game Changers.  Sports have always had a part of history and have shaped the world in many ways.  Tony kicks off his tour in Victoria and it is the World’s Most Sports Mad state.  It was here a game was invented that prevented two nations from tearing themselves apart.

It is in the 1940s and the Americans were invading Australia.  The Americans were well paid and flashed their money around town.  This angered local soldiers and tensions grew.  So, the governments organized a series of matches between the American and Australian soldiers came together and created a game.  This game would combine the skills of American football and Australian Football.  An American reporter called the game a combination of football, soccer, basketball, and aerial bombardment.  The game was called Austus, a combination of the United States and Australia.  The game cooled tensions between the Australians and the Americans and reforged their alliance.
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Tony then goes further back in time and Ancient Greece.  The games were called the Olympics and they were held every four years.  These games were such a big deal that the Greeks built a large statue of Zeus.  These games were held in honor of Zeus and were held at Olympia.  Combat sports played a key role in the games.  These were a test of a warrior’s fighting skills.  The Romans also loved sport as well, but their love of sport ended the Ancient Greek Olympic games.  The statue of Zeus was destroyed, and Olympia was destroyed.  The games were eventually banned.

So how were the games revived?  Tony travels 1,500 years into the future.  The games inspired the people were in Much Wenlock in the 1850s.  The local GP was William Penny-Brooks and he wanted to encourage the young men to exercise their minds as well as their bodies.  He started an Olympian class which allowed the men to show off their skills in exercise.  The first Wenlock games were held in 1850 and have been held every year baring World War I and World War II.  It was the first organized game to be held for working-class people.  Brooks had to fight opposition and won.  His games had rules and the working men could win a medal at the end of victory.  Eventually, Brooks expanded the games to other towns.  A national game was born and was held at the Crystal Palace. 

Brooks met a young aristocrat named Baron Pierre de Coubertin.  They talked long into the night and Coubertin took Brooks’ dream and ran with it.  Eventually and Olympic Committee was formed and the first games were held in 1896.  Unfortunately, Brooks did not live long enough to see his dream come true.  However, not everyone was invited to participate.  Women were not allowed to complete.  Fanny Durack was one of the first women swimmers who participated in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm.  She used the Australian Crawl to win a gold medal and set a world record.

Tony then goes to Rupert’s Wood in Australia to learn about the world’s strangest trophy.  Cricket’s Ashes, the world’s strangest trophy was created in Australia.  The story about this trophy is that the British Cricket Team lost to Australia and so the Australian Team was given ashes.  However, Tony learns the true story.  The trophy was created at Christmas Time after an unofficial game of cricket.  The hostess tossed two small pieces of equipment into a fire and then put the ashes in a plain urn, thus the Ashes Trophy was born.

This would be an excellent episode to show in a physical education class as well as a history class.

Good morning.  I have two more Time Travels I want to review for August and then we will move onto Nations at War for September.  Tony Robinson continues his Time Travels featuring history’s Great Escapes.  He kicks off this episode in prison and the first prison he visits is in Port Arthur in Tasmania. Port Arthur was the Alcatraz of Australia.  In the 1830s and 1840s, the Port Arthur prison was part of the transportation system, and it housed the worse of the worse.  It was considered inescapable.  Port Arthur is a natural fortress.  It was accessible by a narrow strip of land and this strip of land was protected by attack dogs.
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When convicts got there first, they were given heavy, backbreaking work like chopping down and moving trees.  If you were good, you could be trained in a trade.  However, if you broke the rules, you went back to the heavy work only this time you were chained at your legs.  The chains were heavy and there was no way you could get them off.  There were more sinister punishments that were to be had as well.  Isolation was one form of punishment that was used at Port Arthur.  The prisoners were cut off from their fellow prisoners.  The death rates were higher in isolation than they were doing hard labor.  If a prisoner broke the rules there was a punishment cell.  With Port Arthur’s strict rules, there were escape attempts.  One man disguised himself as a kangaroo and escaped that way.

Tony then travels to the 1980s and a political act that shaped the destiny of a nation.  New Zealand just had an election and the Labour Party’s anti-nuclear stance would come under scrutiny.  New Zealand banned nuclear weapons and nuclear power from their country.  The Americans were going to do some military exercises with Australia and New Zealand.  This caused trouble between the Americans and the New Zealanders.  The Americans eventually cut the New Zealanders out of the military exercises.

Tony then visits the site of MacArthur’s duel.  John MacArthur was a soldier serving in Australia and he was the luckiest guy in Australian history.  He would become a rich landowner.  His fate was decided by the flip of a coin.  MacArthur was challenged to a duel by his superior officer Patterson.  He would win the duel but would be in hot water.  The Governor shipped him back to England to face court-martial.  MacArthur’s court-martial was quashed and went around Britain announcing that Australia could become Britain’s wool provider.  Eventually, he was given a land grant and returned to Australia.  On the ship, he ran into the Prince of Wales’ physician and convinced the man to give him some of the king’s sheep.  With this exchange, Australia would become a large wool producer.

Flash forward to the 1930s, Melbourne, and the depression.  The one place where people could escape their troubles was the racetrack.  One horse captured the imagination of the people.  His winning streak lifted the spirits of the people.  However, with great success came enemies.  The bookies were no longer making money on the races, so people thought that horse was better off dead.  There was an attempt on the horse’s life and his owners had to hide the horse.  Unfortunately, the phones and the power were cut to the farm.  The night was uneventful, and the horse made it to the race.  This horse would win the 1930 Melbourne Cup.

Tony then goes to the 1940s and visits a military prison.  A group of inmates decided to break out of the prison.  Twenty-two prisoners made the break for the yard.  What happened to this group of prisoners?  Tune into this episode to find out.

This is another fun and frivolous episode to check out for history or even a geography class.

Tony Robinson continues with his Time Travels in Eat, Drink and Be Merry.  He explores the passion for eat and drink and how it altered the course of history.  Where are the oldest grapevines?  How did rum bring down a government?  Why did the people riot against mutton?  Who controlled fifty percent of the world’s trade at one time?  Who really invented the Pavlova?

There was one drink above others that shaped civilization: Wine.  The world’s oldest grapevines can be found in Australia and a vineyard in Australia.  They were planted in 1843 and were planted by a German immigrant.  A reclusive German immigrant had a mind for soil.  He found an area in Australia where the soil had the potential to be fertile.  He had a vision of vineyards and orchards.  The people thought that he was joking, but he was serious.  This area would eventually have a thriving wine industry.

However, it was another drink that brought down a government.  It is 1808 and the Australia penal colony is getting off the ground.  However, there is a problem: the ruling class felt increasingly vulnerable.  The rulers had to rely on the army, however these were just ordinary blokes who wanted to take advantage of the situation.  These soldiers cornered the market on Rum.  Rum was considered a currency.  Builders were paid in rum.  Rewards for capturing criminals were given in Rum. 

This payment in rum started when the Governor of Australia returned to England due to poor health.  The officers took advantage of the power vacuum that was left and took over the government.  The officers gave themselves land grants and enriched themselves.  Eventually William Blythe was appointed governor and he was stickler for the rules.  He would come face to face to John Macarthur a charismatic Australia who was heavily invested in the colony.  Blythe was supposed to break up the rum cartel.  John Macarthur and his rum cartel fought back, and Blythe was forced to resign.

The next Time Travel takes Tony to Adelaide, Australia and the Great Depression.  The government provided the people with rations of food.  In January 1931, the people rioted against the replacement of beef with mutton an inferior meat in the people’s eyes.  It became known as the Beef Riots and as a result beef remained as part of the rations.
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After this short Time Travel, Tony explores the history of the East India Trading Company.  The 1500s were a period of exploration.  The World was divided between Spain and Portugal.  Only after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, that stranglehold on the world was broken.  The East India Trading Company petitioned the king for permission to explore.  The king granted this petition.  Eventually the East India Trading Company controlled fifty percent of the world trade.  This trading changed people’s taste.  Britain was the first coffee drinking nation in the world.  However, the East India Trading Company was not authorized to trade with coffee growing nations.  Then they started to trade tea and they traded for tea with China.  What did the East India Trading Company trade in order to get the tea?  The answer may surprise you.

Tony’s last stop goes to the 1920’s New Zealand and a fight over desert.  Anna Pavlova was on tour in New Zealand and Australia.  Her dress inspired a desert, which would become known as the Pavlova.  Who invented the Pavlova?  Was it the Australians or the New Zealanders?  Tune into this episode to find out what the Oxford dictionary has to say about the Pavlova.

This was an enjoyable episode about food and would be good to show in a food science class as well as a history class.  For a history class, I would show the section on the East India Trading Company.