I've been very slack in keeping up some kind of narrative with this blog. Until one attempts it, one doesn't realise the discipline required to regularly update the page to maintain a reader's interest. My (rather pathetic) excuse is that I have been occupied by scanning and transferring all of the photos from my mother's photograph albums on to my computer. 

In a book (The Exiles of Asbestos Cottage) by Jim Henderson about the couple who lived for 40 years in the bush up near the Cobb Dam, 22 kilometres as the crow flies from here, he laments that New Zealanders are the world experts at "burning their bloody history". As I'm not keen on being one of that kind of 'expert', I thought it would be a useful winter project to digitise the photos to, in the first instance, preserve the images, and secondly to make them available to other members of the family who may wish to have a copy. 

It is still very much a work in progress. I have so far copied eight albums of black & white photos, and have made a start on the first of a similar number of albums of colour photos. Some of the albums contained up to 450 photos, which all needed to be annotated, for, without them, the photos become meaningless to later generations. 

My first photo is of my mother, taken in October 1944, who spent hours and hours maintaining the albums, and instilled in us an appreciation of our history.

Loraine Jean Lucas (née Flansburgh-Washbourne) 1920-1999