Cultural heritage manager Danny Franks inspects the excavation site where he had discovered Aboriginal artifacts in the ground at a construction site for a light railway in Sydney, March 31, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Reed
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Aboriginal Australians demanded a halt on a A$2.1 billion (1.12 billion pounds) tram construction project in Sydney after excavators found 20,000 objects potentially linked to one of the country's first conflicts between its original inhabitants and Europeans.
Within months of starting work on the three-year project, a government archaeological consultant said on Thursday that excavators found the trove of stone relics in a small patch of land where a new tram station is planned.
