Dane Heslin from Rocky Retro brings old videos photos of Rockhampton back to life

He gained a following of more than 1000 in just two months sharing old photos in colour and preserving family memories. Meet the man behind Rocky Retro.

Everyone knows the saying ‘what’s old is new again’, and one Rockhampton man is helping that saying become a reality.

About two months ago, Dane Heslin started up his business Rocky Retro, where he makes things like old videos, 8mm slides digitally accessible.

Rocky Retro allows Mr Heslin, who grew up in the 80s, to work with the things he enjoyed using when he was growing up such as VHS, cassettes, camcorders and video players.

While keeping his job in an electronics shop, in his spare time Mr Heslin converts old video tapes, cassettes and film slides into a digital platform, preserving precious family memories around the region.

“I’m an 80s boy so I’ve always likes VHS and cool retro stuff like that,” he said.

“I work in an electronics shop and I always had customers ask how to convert the old videos and I didn’t really know who did it.

“So I put the feelers out to see who wanted stuff done, then I make up a logo and created the Facebook page.

“I had about 100 people on my waiting list and I still have about 40 to get back to.”

As well as preserving precious family memories, Mr Heslin also brings to life old photos of Rockhampton from way back in the late 1800s to the 1950s.

His work has been so well received he’s had local sporting clubs and CQUniversity ask him to work his magic on some of their old slides.

His work on old photos has also been well received by people in the community reliving their own memories of the way Rockhampton used to be.

“I’m Rocky born and bred and there’s a lot of heritage, I just love all that stuff, I think Rocky was going to be the Melbourne of Queensland back in the day,” he said.

“A lot of older people don’t really know how to find that sort of stuff on Google, so they just love it and I like it too, it’s a very niche business.”

Offering different package deals for different needs, each video Mr Heslin converts comes with a DVD, USB and a downloadable link.

To convert the videos he uses a number of different pieces of equipment including VHS players and camcorders.

“I don’t really watch them (the videos) because they’re a lot of family home videos, but there was one a lady from Gladstone sent in which had some old 90s cartoons and TV commercials which was pretty cool,” he said.

“Most of them (customers) want those memories on digital to show their families down the track and will just do whatever it takes to preserve their memories.

“There’s two ways I do the photos … not all of them can be done automatically, some can take half an hour or some can take me up to four days to do.”

In the past few years the popularity of vinyl records has risen again, but Mr Heslin said he’d noticed the resurgence of cassette tapes thanks to popular Netflix series Stranger Things.

“A lot of kids are influenced by the show Stranger Things, which is based in the 80s, and TikTok, which is really cool, we’re selling them (cassette players) like no tomorrow,” he said.

“Ever since Stranger Things came out, more and more people are coming in for the cassettes and VHS.”