The grounds of an old orphanage in regional Victoria are being dug up, as police investigate reports scores of children were informally buried there.
The excavation work at the old Ballarat orphanage started on Monday and has yet to uncover any evidence of child burials, superintendent Andrew Allen said on Wednesday.
"No, nothing of interest from our particular inquiries," he told ABC Television.
The digging is focused on a site identified as suspicious in a ground scan.
The investigation is occurring amid long-circulating rumours of children going missing from the orphanage.
They were raised again at a City of Ballarat council meeting around the time the land was sold to a developer in 2013.
Much of the site now resembles a paddock though, from 1865 to 1968, it housed a large dorm-style building that was Ballarat's orphanage.
That was demolished and replaced with smaller cottages operating as Ballarat Children's Homes, from 1968 to 1984, and then these buildings were used as a school. Roger Trudgeon, senior curator at Ballarat's Gold Museum, said the Victoria St site had housed orphans for more than a century.
"There is a formal orphanage burial plot at the old cemetery but I had heard that kids had been buried at the orphanage site itself, when perhaps the regulations on these things weren't quite as rigorous as they are now," Mr Trudgeon told AAP.
"Over the years, knowledge about where that was has been lost."
The anecdotal reports did not indicate a "sinister purpose" to child burials at the site, he said.
"(But) I think it is good that a proper search is made so the matter can be resolved one way or the other, before the developers move in."
Should human remains be found, and be less than 100 years old, Victoria's coroner will become involved in the case. The excavation work is expected to continue for several more days.
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