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  • Peace Day Parade

    Video

    A Peace Day Parade at Woonona in New South Wales on 19 July 1919, claimed to be the best procession in the state outside of Sydney.

  • Amusing sports events

    Video

    Scenes from the “Strawberry Fete” held at Torquay in Devon in the United Kingdom on Alexandra Day, Wednesday 27 June 1917. Promoted by the Four Allied Trades: Dairymen, Fruiterers, Grocers and Bakers, the fete was both a fundraiser and a morale booster.

    Pictured here are New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) personnel, nurses and locals participating in games and novelty races, including blindfolded races, crawling races, wheelbarrow races and apple-eating competitions. Soldiers, too injured to participate, look on.

  • Patriotic Football

    Video

    Football clubs displayed their patriotism by publishing lists of players (past and present) who had enlisted, and by organising carnivals and events to raise funds for the war effort.  This film shows a fundraising match between the 1915 VFL premiers Carlton and an Army Camp side at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The Camp team, wearing the Collingwood strip, was made up of current and former AFL players who had enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. The match, won by Carlton, raised 248 pounds for the Wounded Soldiers Fund and attracted 6000 spectators.

  • Flags for Victory

    Video

    Belgian Flag Days, along with French Flag Days, Violet Day and Wattle Day, occurred across Australia during World War One. They were organised to raise funds, engage communities and encourage new recruits, as well as to honour and pay respect to the wounded, the fallen and their families.  This film shows a Belgian Flag Day held at the former mining town of Burra, South Australia, on 10 May 1915.

  • Schoolgirl life and love during the war

    Audio

    There was a sharp divide between rich and poor in New Zealand at the time of the First World War. Marjorie Lees, the daughter of an upper-class Wellington family, was attending boarding school in 1914. Young women of her social status faced a restricted life, with very few options apart from marriage once they left school. But like young people from all walks of life, she was soon to experience the heartbreak of war.

  • Penny trails and white feathers

    Audio

    During WW1, those at home were encouraged to support the men at the front by donating money or goods to the war effort. Colin Franklin-Browne recalls watching fundraising parades and penny trails (lines of coins which the public were encouraged to add to) on Wellington’s streets in 1914-15. He also remembers the dark side of this patriotic fervor. Women’s patriotic groups sent white feathers, symbols of cowardice, to men who had not enlisted. The women targeted pacifists, men not yet in uniform and even those unable to enlist for medical reasons.

  • Mrs Barnard’s gingernuts

    Audio

    Six of Helena Barnard’s eight sons went away to fight, and she sent them care packages that included the gingernut biscuits she used to bake for them to take on tramping trips. The gingernuts were a welcome change from the notorious Gallipoli diet of tinned bully beef and ship’s biscuits. They lasted well and quickly became favourites with the boys at the front. Many wrote to Mrs Barnard asking her to provide their own mums with her recipe. Her gingernuts became famous and are quite possibly the original ANZAC biscuit. This interview was recorded around the time of Helena Barnard’s 100th birthday.

  • Flower power

    Video

    It was the most spectacular parade that the South Island town of Nelson had ever seen. Daffodil Week, a fundraising campaign to provide comforts to troops serving overseas, took place in September 1916, and the highlight was the grand parade and crowning of the Flower Queen. The streets were decorated with flags and from early morning children were selling buttonholes (small posies of flowers), while stallholders sold cut flowers, ferns, plants, seedlings, sweets and produce.

    In this short film the impact of World War One is evident. The floats and organizations are marshalled by uniformed soldiers, and the streets are lined with members of the local Territorial infantry battalion. The Rt. Rev. William Sadlier, the Bishop of Nelson, can be seen in a frock-coat in the crowd. The annual Flower Queen, elected by popular vote, was Miss Hazel Win. Altogether £780 (or NZ$100,000 today) was raised for Christmas presents for the boys at the front.

  • Clowns and kids raise funds for war effort

    Video

    Clowns boxing and performing ‘pratfalls’, children singing, dancing and marching in formation – this was the crowd-pleasing entertainment at a Red Cross fundraiser at Bondi Junction, Sydney in 1915. The Australian Red Cross had been formed just a year earlier, at the outbreak of the war. It concentrated on raising funds to support the war effort by organising public events such as the ‘fete’, or festival, seen here. This newsreel clip was originally silent and a popular brass band tune of the period, The Gippsland March, has been added to the soundtrack.

  • Fundraising for the war effort, Sydney

    Video

    Various wartime fundraising and recruitment activities are seen in this film from about 1916, shot from outside the General Post Office in Martin Place, Sydney, after rain. In pavilion-style tent stalls, Red Cross workers sell ribbons, flowers and other produce. The top-hatted Governor of NSW, Sir Gerald Strickland, walks among the crowds. Many AIF troops are shown in this clip, their humour in evidence in a shot of a young male civilian being ‘accosted’ and compelled to enlist, while others pretend to take his measurements for a uniform.