My rugby career was longer than it had to be and ended with a whimper on a cool summer’s morning in 2020 in a something-nil loss against another GPS schools’ socials team. My Father’s was far more prestigious, from the Chevaliers First 15, to Woollahra Colleagues Rugby, to the Bowral Blacks, and finally coaching the Sydney Convicts in their 2004 debut year.
This connection with the Convicts turned into a meeting with one of its founders, Andrew ‘Fuzz’ Purchas, who returned to Sydney from San Francisco in 2003 intent on establishing an inclusive gay rugby team after his own experiences of exclusion from the sport after coming out as gay some years earlier.
In that meeting it was found that despite having won the International Gay Rugby Bingham Cup 5 times in its 24 year history, and hosting the 2014 Cup in Sydney, the Club’s activities on and off the field have been subject to an irregular amount of documentation. It seemed that the stars had aligned. I had several months of experience in the Australian Museum’s archives as part of their digitisation program and was already familiar with the front-end and user experience of an archive.
Archives are trickier than just shoving a bunch of folders into a cabinet in a cool & dry attic. The actual physical and digital storage of data that needed to be reliable enough to survive years without seeing the light of day but also accessible enough that that same data can be found at a moment’s notice. Especially because I had already dropped the word ‘digital’ in my meeting with Andrew.
A hard drive will last about 5 years with regular use, a SSD will last between 5-10, and that’s before considering the computer that goes with them. Hypothetically hard drives can actually last forever if the disk-reading mechanism remains intact and no one drags a magnet over the disk. Another option is 3rd party storage, with its own problems, what if the service stops in 7 years? Or someone forgets to change the card for the payment plan? What’s worse, human or technical error losing what could become the only copies of items of Sydney Convict history?
Aside from the logistics of archives, the act of retrieving the items themselves poses its own challenge. Media coverage by the likes of the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC is simple enough thanks to their digitised articles, but from more local and queer specific sources recovery can be more spotty. Doubly so for items that only exist in physical form, did anyone keep a copy of the program of the 2014 Bingham Cup for 10 years?
Regardless of these difficulties, the club and its members have so far been very enthusiastic about the history project and a pleasure to work with. I’m looking forward to what can be achieved by the end of semester.