Footage of the crowd of protesters outside Pentridge Prison on the day of Ronald Ryan’s execution, 3 February 1967.

One of the film reels from the Nine Network contained silent footage of two live reports by Nine News’ Michael Schildberger from outside Pentridge Prison. During the documenting of another NFSA news collection, from TVT-6 in Tasmania, we found the same footage - this time with sound - on a compiled news film reel. The second print confirmed the timing of the news reports: the first being at 7.30 am and the second at 3 minutes before 8 am, the time set for Ryan’s hanging. It was not known at the time that this would be the last execution carried out in Australia.

This clip is from a film compilation of Channel Nine News footage on Ronald Ryan held in the NFSA television collection.