It is always sad when you contact companies that have a long history in Australia with a question about their own past and they say they do not have any information. In one case of a company I contacted, they even denied ever making a particular model of machine from the 1990s, even though it has their brand name on it. They in fact refused to acknowledge any machine they once made, even the ones just a few years old.
Some companies do keep a running archive of their own history on file, others seem to just move on from year to year and apparently bin everything relating to previous sales periods. Former managers move on or retire. Younger ones take their place who often have no knowledge of what came before them. The world is becoming faster paced all the time. It has become so hard keeping "relevant" and up-to-date and ahead of the competitors that there is no time for the past. Try to talk to a computer company for instance about the model they brought out in 2002 and they will laugh at you. That was like "AGES" ago!!! They cannot understand why anyone should be interested in something so old when there are brand new ones available on the shelf.
On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised when I contacted the Conwire company recently, which made throttle control levers for mowers back in the 1960s. The company is still in operation today. I sent them photos of a 1960s throttle control and they had a hunt around the workshop and returned a photo of a partial Conwire throttle control from the 1960s. They said they would keep looking as the missing part may still turn up. Sometimes we can help to spark an interest in a company's past simply by expressing an interest ourselves. This is more likely to be the case with smaller, privately-owned enterprises that have a long history. Other times our interest is a lost cause, especially in the case of some large, modern companies. Sadly, this is regardless of the fact that these companies often grew from very humble beginnings.
I was in fact thinking of contacting Rover myself to see if they would have any archived photos of their very first factory in Brisbane. But now it seems this could be a lost cause? :-(
