Re-visiting http://tim-pizey.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/cvs-to-github.html (why did I not complete this at the time?)
Following How to export revision history from mercurial or git to cvs?
On hanuman I created an id file git_authors mapping cvs ids to github name, email format for all contributors:
then create a repository on github (melati in this example, I already have uploaded my ssh public key for this machine)
timp=Tim Pizey<timp@paneris.org>
See https://github.com/timp21337/melati.
cd ~
git cvsimport -d /usr/cvsroot -C MelatiSite -r cvs -k -A git_authors MelatiSite
cd melati
echo A jdbc to java object relational mapping system. 1999-2011 > README.txt
git add README.txt
git commit -m "Initial" README.txt
git remote add origin git@github.com:timp21337/melati.git
git push -u origin master