The Upper Clutha district's ''photo album'' is slowly coming together. Wanaka reporter Mark Price meets the dedicated couple sifting through thousands of images.
If you think sorting out the family photograph collection would be a big job, spare a thought for Ken and Margaret Thomlinson, of Wanaka.
They are cataloguing and digitising thousands of photos of the Upper Clutha collected over the last 30 years.
Mr and Mrs Thomlinson, together, were once the entire science department at Aspiring College when it was an area school.
But now retired, much of their attention is focused on the material collected by the Upper Clutha Historical Records Society and stored at the Wanaka Library.
Mrs Thomlinson says every photo of the Upper Clutha that is given or loaned is kept or copied and archived ''... because we don't know who's going to go looking for it''.
Each photo is being scanned and the original stored in acid-free envelopes - a big enough job in itself.
However, Mrs Thomlinson points out that an even bigger job is finding and attaching the correct information for each photo.
Some have words scrawled on the back, or the front, but many have nothing.
The work they are doing will make it easier for people in the future to search for photos, Mrs Thomlinson says.
''We had a card system, but the card system doesn't cross-reference and that became a bit haphazard when trying to find things.
''You gradually get to know what stuff's there, but to someone else coming in it isn't so obvious.''
She expects eventually the photos will be available online, but searching still requires making arrangements with the library to access the society's room.
Mr and Mrs Thomlinson, who moved to Wanaka from Dunedin in 1966, got involved with the society in the late 1980s.
Asked if she could see an end in sight to the cataloguing job, Mrs Thomlinson said: ''Sometimes yes; sometimes no. I don't think it's something you can hurry.''
Her favourite photos were of weddings and grand occasions, while her husband favoured the many aerial photos taken of the town over the decades, Mrs Thomlinson said.
