Thank you very much for your kind donation!: 40 years ago this month

Do you remember the 1981 Telethon?

Negative strip from the Christchurch Star Archive showing Onionathon at Farmers-Haywrights carpark, Riccarton
Onionathon at Farmers-Haywrights carpark, Riccarton, 19 June 1981, Christchurch Star Archive. CCL-Star-1981-4873-021-030N-01.
Negative strip from the Christchurch Star Archive showing 1981 Telethon
Christchurch Telethon '81 celebrity guests and fundraiser counter, 29 June 1981, Christchurch Star Archive. CCL-Star-1981-4883-013-062N-09.

Telethons were a popular 24 hours of live televised entertainment with celebrities — and regular people —  raising money for charitable causes. All sorts of groups got involved, both during the filming and in the lead up with all sorts of stunts to raise money. The 1981 Telethon was fundraising for the International Year of the Disabled. Just over 5 million dollars was raised!

Prior to the 24 hours of filming for the actual Telethon, Christchurch hosted many '-athons' for fundraising, including an onionathon, a heightathon and a telephone-boxathon! Were you involved in any fundraising events? Perhaps you can find yourself or someone that you know in our collection? You can add comments and stories to the images so that we all know more about what took place. You can register to post comments directly to the images in the toolbar for Canterbury Stories.

These images are just some of thousands in the Christchurch Star Archive that we house and are working through to digitise and make accessible online. There are over 8,000 negatives and 5,500 prints to explore in this particular collection. We now have a total of over 29,500 items that you can explore in Canterbury Stories that include photographs, negatives and maps.

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