[District Nursing Appeal]

The Royal District Nursing Service was founded in 1885 and was originally called the Melbourne District Nursing Service. An initiative led by the Reverend Charles Strong, the organisation was established to nurse the sick, poor and disadvantaged in their own homes. By the early 1920s the nurses were treating 25,000 patients per year and had established a convalescent institution, the After-Care Home (later Hospital) in Collingwood. In 1966 the organisation became the Royal District Nursing Service.

In this television appeal from 1967, Graham Kennedy presents a feature on behalf of the Royal District Nursing Service. The film includes footage of Kennedy in the television studio, appealing for door knockers to help fundraise for the organisation. The program shows footage of Kennedy interviewing an elderly war veteran at his home in Albert Park, who lives alone and is visited by an RDNS nurse every day.

It appears this film was produced as a Kinescope - a 16mm film recording of a live television broadcast. As such, both the sound and image are a little ‘muddy’ as is typical of this technology.