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• 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.

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