Two weeks ago Dwayne Carey, who runs the Facebook page Southland’s Past — Te Wāmua o Murihiku, posted the image of four elephants grazing outside the Creamoata mill.
This is his second time posting the image, which he got from a Wellington archive, having posted a black and white version in 2022.
Mr Carey has the software to colourise black and white photographs and said the coloured images get more clicks on social media.
He said people on the internet, particularly on Facebook, want instant gratification.
"So when they scroll down and see something, they can react to it straight away," he said.
"Whereas a video ... people still don’t watch them unless they’re interested."
On the post accompanying the coloured elephant photo, Mr Carey wrote the photo was taken when the Wirth’s Circus came to town in the 1940s or 1950s.
"Does anyone have any old stories about elephants in Gore? We’d love to hear them," Mr Carey asked his 36,000 followers.
The post had more than 700 likes, while the 2022 black and white post had 300.
The more than 190 comments on the latest post had users offering their tales of elephants in Southland.
It was well documented that circus elephants had been visiting Southland up until the 1960s, the comments said.
A popular example was the case of a 20-year-old elephant, named Sally, which died and was buried in Riversdale while the Bullen Brothers Circus was visiting in 1960.
A historical monument for the exotic animal’s grave on Nine Mile Rd was erected in 2019.
Mr Carey worked for the TV station QTV, formerly Mercury TV and Southland TV, for 19 years before it closed in 2015.
"I was the first on, last to leave," he said.
When it closed, all the old TV footage was going to get thrown out, so Mr Carey rescued it and had been slowly drip feeding it on the page ever since.
The reaction he got from his audience, particularly when they knew or were related to the subjects of one of his videos, was rewarding, he said.
"I do like getting comments in public from people saying, ‘Oh my God, my daughter’s never seen her grandfather before and heard his voice, and you’re the only one with a video’," he said.
In the past five years, he had been struggling with his health and said Southland’s Past kept him going, giving him something to do.
It had kept him occupied during Covid, where he often spent 16 hours a day on content for the site.
His audience is "a lot" of Southland expats living in Australia, the UK and in the North Island.
Doing the work exclusively pro bono, and for the love of it, he said he may start crowdfunding to afford carrying on with the site.
A lot of his systems were old and due for replacing, and he needed money for that, he said.
Being the only one who knew how to operate the antiquated systems, he said if he died, all the material would be lost.
"I feel like I am a caretaker for everything," he said.
