Spending hours in the dust under a hot summer sun — just so as to prise a fragment of pottery from the hard-baked soil — is not how everyone imagines their ideal holiday but, for 22-year-old Orange girl, Laura DeRooy, it’s a dream come true.

The former James Sheehan student recently returned from a trip to Malta — the island republic that sits squarely in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Although a country covering barely more than 300 square kilometres, its strategic location has seen it fought over by just about every nearby nation that ever launched a ship over the past 3000 years! Phonecians, Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, French, and the British, have all staked their claim at one point or another and, it is this tempestuous history, that drew Laura there from halfway around the world.

“I went to Malta and we were digging in an old Roman house from about 200 BCE,” says Laura, who is in her fourth and final year of a Bachelor of Archaeology at Macquarie University, Sydney.

“It was a volunteer program… I'm in the archaeology society at my university, so it was advertised to us through that, and it was really fun! Hard work and really hot — it was summer over in Malta and quite a hot summer this year — but really fun!”

With a global pandemic overshadowing most of her university degree, this was Laura’s first opportunity to get hands-on experience at an archaeological excavation —and she jumped at the chance.

“Volunteer work has been a little bit difficult these last few years, but they are starting to pick up on digs again now, so hopefully I'll get to do even more,” she says.

“Being with a team, I think that was the best aspect of it. When you are in a classroom studying, it is very individual and, obviously, through COVID, I haven't been able to be around that many people. Being with the team in the dirt, finally, actually, learning everything hands-on, it was great.”

Laura says her fascination with history began in her early years of high school.

“It was something that I found that I didn't get sick of learning about. I'd be in other classes, like maths and counting down the minutes, but history was just always interesting,” she says.

But it was in her senior years while studying the Roman city of Pompeii — left largely preserved under volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 — that inspired Laura to pursue a career in archaeology.

“The area of archeology I like, is human nature, people, how they interacted in everyday life and Pompeii really covers that… everyday life in Pompeii was so cool to me,” she says.

“I saw archaeology and I thought that would be way more fun because you actually get your hands on history, rather than just reading about it, which is fun too, but actually getting to read about it and dig and be involved in it just interested me way more.”

Following the dig in Malta, Laura got to fulfil another long-held dream and actually visit Pompeii for herself. She is determined that it won’t be the last time she does so.

“It was very overwhelming— in the best way. I was so excited and it was everything I thought it would be. We got there in the morning, so it wasn't too busy and we got to wander around and it felt really good to be there,” she says.

“I really want to dig at Pompeii one day, that is the ultimate goal, but I’m also interested in archeology in the UK. I'd really like to go over to Scotland and do archeology over there. I'm trying to put some plans in place, but Roman archeology in the UK, it's what I really like.”