Chris Borough and Graham Nicholson have made it their mission to uncover and preserve as much of this history as they can.

The two met through mutual friend Terry Wright - the great-great-grandson of John Wright of the John Wright shipping company - and quickly discovered a shared interest in the boats of the Manning and Great Lakes, which set them off on a journey to discover as much as they could about the region's maritime past.

Roughly five years on, they've amassed an incredible database, with close to 600 photos accompanied by detailed historical information on their Flickr page, Great Lakes Manning River Shipping NSW.

A somewhat unlikely pairing, the two nonetheless bring their own experiences and areas of expertise to the project.

Chris is a retired forester who worked in Papua New Guinea and later with the Forest Research Institute and CSIRO, before establishing his own firm - Forest Science Consultancy.

Graham, a skilled cabinet maker, is a fourth generation Tuncurry local whose family has been in the fishing and boat-building industries for over a century.

"Chris is good at writing and researching, and I come up with the local stuff," Graham said.

Together they've not only connected with some of the world's leading researchers in maritime history, but in many ways have become leading sources of information on the subject themselves, with their research being used by PhD candidates and maritime museums alike.

And the project hasn't just kept them confined to the Great Lakes, but has seen them travel to New Zealand, Broome, Cape York and Western Australia to track down information on the ships they've been researching.

But while there's no questioning their commitment to the project, they're not doing it for money or acclaim.

"We do it for the love," Graham said.

"I want to pass it on for generations to come. Once that history is gone, if it's not recorded, it'll be lost forever."

Chris is of a similar mindset.

"It's rewarding that the information is preserved and made available," he said.

"To me, it's incredibly selfish to hold onto that information."

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And it's not just the details of these ships they want to preserve, but the stories that accompany them, which, both Graham and Chris agree, can be fascinating and of surprising relevance to the local area today.

"I think the sheer diversity of where these things end up is so interesting," Chris said.

"And what they did on the boats," Graham added.

"It could be drug-running, transporting sly grog, native labour recruiting (blackbirding), mayhem and murder. It puts the whole lot together."

The pair will be sharing some of these stories with readers of The Manning River Times in coming months, with their first tale focusing on the WT85, one of the large number of wooden vessels built for the US Army, Australian Army and the Royal Navy at Tuncurry and Taree in World War II.

The Wooden Towboat WT85 is the only boat built at the famous John Wright shipyard still in operation.

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