Six days after launching a local history group on Facebook back in 2013, David Bottin and his friend Brenden Brain watched in wonder as the number of page likes ticked over 1000.
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Residents from all over the Illawarra were dusting off their old photo albums to scan and upload private Kodak moments, flooding the Lost Wollongong page with faded images of a time long gone.
As never-before-seen shots of the region went viral and the group's following exploded, Mr Bottin knew he’d tapped into something bigger than himself.
From the outset, Lost Wollongong belonged to neither him nor Mr Brain but a devoted community of nostalgia lovers who called themselves ‘’Losties’’.
Read more: The rise and rise of Lost Wollongong
Last week the group celebrated its fifth anniversary with a 26,000-strong following on Facebook and another 5000 on Instagram.
They are the proud custodians of a staggering - and growing - collection of 28,000 historical images of the Illawarra.
"When Brenden and I launched it on the 18th May, 2013, we could never have imagined how much of an impact it would have," Mr Bottin said.
"There were only a few history-orientated Facebook groups back then, but since then the numbers have exploded.
"There's now a Facebook history page for most suburbs, including our sister pages Shellharbour History in Photos, Dapto History in Photos and Mount Keira History in Photos.”
Mr Bottin says running the group’s social media accounts has been a major headache at times, but that improvements to Facebook have made it easier to manage and organise the sheer volume of photos.
“We’ve had some very dedicated admin over the years who kept Lost Wollongong and our sister pages running smoothly, especially Karen Lecourt, Scott Fleming and Allan Baker,” he said.
“One of our recently retired admins, Janet Rogers, spent hundreds of hours collecting and categorising thousands of photos into dozens of easy-to-search albums.“
Looking back, Mr Bottin is most proud of the work he has done to leverage the group’s reach to promote local history.
He created the Wollongong Museum Trail in 2015 in partnership with Destination Wollongong to take advantage of a rise in heritage tourism across Australia, and built the Lost Wollongong website to plug the region's libraries, museums and historical events.
Next up Mr Bottin is teaming up with film-maker Sandra Pires on a new Yesterday Stories app, which he says will “revolutionise the way people access local heritage, including short video stories”.
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