Last September, an 1810 diary entry describing a ``small miserable hut'' lived in by Mrs Macarthur and a Conrad Martens painting helped Dr Higginbotham uncover evidence of that hut.

But he also found evidence of another building on the site that could be the real ``small miserable hut'' that Mrs Macarthur called home in the early 1800s.

So this week Dr Higginbotham and his volunteers dug a little deeper. They removed the rubble of a fireplace found in what they believe to be the true ``small miserable hut'' to find the artefacts underneath.

``We've checked out the fireplace and so far everything is pre-1840s,'' he said. ``So that is consistent with that [being the small miserable hut]. Now it's just the case of confirming the story.''

The excitement and significance of this dig has not been lost on Dr Higginbotham: ``It's a great privilege because we're actually working on the earliest buildings associated with the Macarthur estate.''