Fifty Thousand See Great NSW Police Carnival

From the 1920s to the 1970s, cinemas screened short news and entertainment reels before the feature films. We hold over 4,000 reels in our collection.  

A Cinesound Movietone reel from March 1936 covered the New South Wales Police Carnival, a vast military-style spectacle of parading squads. This excerpt shows a ‘death-defying’ display race that defies belief.  

In the characteristic newsreel style, the narrator has been cracking a stream of pun-heavy jokes, but after a brief ‘Caeser’s Ghost!’ he falls silent to let us ponder the sight of two daredevils (police officers, presumably) in centurion garb, racing chariots drawn by motorcycles. Almost 100 years later, it’s still an eye-popping sight.  

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