Hawke's Bay Fruitgrowers Association GM Dean Smith's children Piper, 11, and Luca, 9, get to work on cleaning the old cups and trophies saved after the cyclone.
Hawke's Bay Fruitgrowers Association GM Dean Smith's children Piper, 11, and Luca, 9, get to work on cleaning the old cups and trophies saved after the cyclone.
Historic records of the Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Association, some dating back to 1899, were casualties of the devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle in mid-February.
Founded 124 years ago, the association has fostered, promoted and protected fruit growers throughout the Bay.
The records were kept in a storage facility on an orchard in Korokipo Rd. It contained a large assortment of archives, including minutes relating to the formation of the association, newspaper clippings, and trophy cups.
A few bits and pieces were salvaged but most records were damaged beyond repair.
Whilst the destruction of such historic information was a tragedy there is a silver lining to the story.
Early in 2022, the association approached Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank to digitise their records and a large number of photographs.
The Knowledge Bank is a digital record of Hawke’s Bay and its people which continues to grow as residents donate material from times past to be digitised and uploaded to the public website.
Knowledge Bank, housed in historic Stoneycroft Homestead in Hastings, is overseen by the Hawke’s Bay Digital Archives Trust.
The board members serve voluntarily, as do all 80-plus volunteers involved in the recording, digitising and uploading of material.
General manager of the Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers Association, Dean Smith, said it was “super lucky that we’d only just had our written historical documents digitised by Knowledge Bank Hawke’s Bay so these are preserved for future generations”.
Robyn Warren at Knowledge Bank evaluated the original material to determine if it had already been preserved digitally.
There were plenty of newspaper clippings, for example, that may have already been digitised.
The Knowledge Bank has managed to digitally preserve many historical documents.
It took quite some time to evaluate as it was quite a large collection, she said.
The records had survived fire and the 1931 earthquake.
Smith said that while other risk factors, such as rodents, had been considered before, there had never been thought given to the risk of flooding.
Having the records digitised showed the value of taking proactive steps to preserve history which was the next best thing to having the original documents, he said.
“It’s nice to have history preserved in a way the public can access.”
Smith thanked Knowledge Bank for its work and encouraged people to support it.
Knowledge Bank is still collecting photos and videos of the cyclone and encourages members of the public to share material. It will all be copied and returned.
Wherever possible, Knowledge Bank provides the full original digitised files, free for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 New Zealand License.
This article first appeared in Hawke’s Bay Today’s Pick of Hawke’s Bay feature.
