Timecapsule - February 2009

[griffin]

I have the original newsletters archived, which is how I got most of that info together. Unfortunately, this time-capsule project is more time consuming than I had expected, and is usually something I had as a low priority (and in the months leading up to BotCon, didn't have much spare time). That is changing though, as I'm catching up with things more now, so hope to have these done again soon.

[dirge]

Btw does anyone remember Ian Hollis at all? Seemed like a nice bloke, from Port Macquarie.

I never met him, but I heard some... colourful... stories.

BTW There was one Aussie online before me... but he vanished from alt.toys.transformers a month or two after I found the place... and wasn't especially prolific either. Either way, it wasn't too long before Ratbat (not around anymore, AFAIK), Charl (still around, but not on OzFormers), griffin and Skyshadow turned up.

[GoktimusPrime]

I tried to find the online TF community since like, before the internet!

I used to be part of a local Sydney dial-up BBS called Active Entertainment in 1993. There was another user there called skyfire, and I got all excited thinking he might be a Transfan, but it turned out he wasn't. The fact that his handle is also a Transformer name was a pure coincidence. I requested the SysOps for a Transformers SIG (Special Interest Group), but I was denied since I was pretty much the only user who had openly expressed interest in Transformers. I was hoping that setting up a TF SIG might bring more closet Transfans out of the woodwork, but I guess the Ops thought that it would be silly to set up a SIG for just one user!

From 1995 I started trying to look for anything related to Transformers on the internet, but all I could find was sites on electrical transformers! But I kept searching for the next 2 years, and founds lots of sites for electrical transformers - step up transformers, step down transformers, stepping all around transformers, whee! But nothing about The Transformers! GRAAAAAARRGHH! I wasn't until 1997 when I _finally_ found some web site that were actually related to the Transformers franchise! Joy! The first board I joined was hosted by Naito Naonori in Shiga prefecture (near Lake Biwa). And I also found a humble site on acweb run by some university student in New York called Benson Yee. So it was from that point that I got into the online fandom - I asked Ben if he knew of any other TF fans from Australia, and he told me about "AusTrans" and passed on my contact details to griffin. Everything else as they say, is history.