Guest speaker was British archaeologist Louise Schofield, an archaeologist who has been working in Ethiopia for five years.

Her first archaeological, conservation and development project, in 2007-2009, (under the auspices of the Eyesus Hintsa Trust) transformed a barren river valley in Tigray into an archaeological and environmental park.

Ms Schofield described the work achieved by harnessing the entire population of the valley - about 2800 people - using funding from a philanthropist in the UK who stumped up the money for the payroll.

She said thousands of metres of terracing was built along with an aqueduct that supplied a reservoir. Fruit trees were planted and water supplies were either renovated or established.

Ethiopia was one of the very poorest countries in the world, she said, and the people of its north-eastern region of Tigray have had an unenviable recent history beset by civil war, border conflicts with neighbouring Eritrea, drought and terrible famine - the worst in 1985 when a million Ethiopians died.

Tigray is now politically stable but drought, crop failure and famine are an ever-present danger to communities so entirely dependent on subsistence farming for a living.

She said in the face of all these hardships the people have maintained their dignity and their wonderful spirit.

The Tigray Trust works at a grassroots level with each community designing and implementing holistic projects incorporating food security, crop diversification, reforestation and the promotion of the region's extraordinary cultural heritage to encourage ecotourism as an additional and sustainable source of income.

Ms Schofield said there was an ongoing water supply project mending broken hand-pumps and building substantial structures to harness spring water where available. These are fitted with taps for the use of the villagers thus ensuring a supply of clean fresh drinking water - and spring-fed cattle troughs for their livestock.

The trust was also engaged in a reforestation project in Maikado - buying high-value cash-crop fruit trees for the villagers.

It originally provided each of the farms with a small orchard of local fruit trees - papaya, guava and turungo (a local citrus).

It has now embarked on a rolling program of even higher-value specially grafted trees - including orange, avocado, mango and coffee.

She said the initial 200 farms were all given a flock of Rhode Island red chickens. Interbreeding between these and native Ethiopian ones has produced a strong, happy, healthy hybrid that lays lots of eggs.

Nutrition for the families has improved markedly and surplus eggs and chicks are sold and exchanged at market for other items that the people need. An additional 800 or so farms bought chickens in December.

Many of the farms have been given beehives with all the necessary accessories and have had training in how to use them.

The trust also monitors the level of drought at the beginning of each rainy season and provides the farmers with replacement grain - tef [which provides the flour for the staple Ethiopian bread], barley and maize - if the harvest fails.

In its fourth year of working with the community at Maikado, Ms Schofield said the trust had begun the creation of an archaeological and environmental park.

She said the area around the village was important and exciting archaeological site dating to the time (ninth to fourth century BC) when this part of Ethiopia was part of the land of Sheba, whose Queen made a great journey to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem.

An ever-increasing number of travellers are coming to the Gheralta Plateau to visit the rock- hewn churches there, she said.

The next Dubbo and district ADFAS lecture will be held on June 24 and the topic will be Sir Joseph Banks: Passionate Patron.

Mitchell Library senior curator Paul Brunton will present the lecture at the Wesley Church hall from 6.30pm.