It was another sold-out Our Kids Golf Day at the Lismore Golf Club on Friday afternoon, as golfers and non-golfers, but all supporters of one of Lismore's favourite charities got together to raise money for a vital piece of equipment for premature babies.

(Inside the Lismore Golf Club as Dr Chris Ingall explains how the Retcam will help the local community)

Dr Chris Ingall, the founder of Our Kids in 2001, talked a little about his teams golf on Friday evening before we moved onto the more serious part of the chat.

"I would just like to talk about the golf for a little bit," Dr Chris said with a smile, "We hit it well enough that there were enough good shots that you'd want to come back and try it again. An ambrose is so forgiving; it's a really good setup. And out on the course, a lot of the teams all know each other, so there's this sort of mutual sledging happening. It's been really good fun. We were one under for the round."

(Team Ingall: Kyle Dunlop, Dr Chris Ingall, John Mills and David Kelly)

Fundraising Coordinator Rebekka Battista passed on the good news that over $10,000 was raised for Our Kids. Dr Chris then provided the important details of what this will mean for families of premature babies in Lismore and the Northern Rivers.

"So the Retcam is something which I think is best understood as keeping kids local, so that babies who are born extremely prematurely can have the back of their eyes checked for the blood vessels growing over them.

"The blood vessels can grow over the back of the eyes and cause blindness. And so you the Retcam is a way of monitoring that. Sometimes, you have to photograph them each week and make sure that they don't need laser therapy and so forth. So it's very critical.

"Babies who come back to Tweed, Lismore and Grafton, are sometimes held up in the tertiary because they haven't got the eye cameras to monitor and lessen the risk.

"So, the Retcam is going to be for the three valleys, and it's a beautiful piece of optical equipment, which a nurse or a doctor, say, in Lismore or Grafton, can just open the eye, take the photo and send it to the Queensland Children's Hospital ophthalmologists, who can then give us an immediate assessment, and tell us how when to do the next one, without the baby having to leave the nurseries here and have to travel to Brisbane. Babies, when they're tiny, don't handle travel very well."

As you can imagine, the Retcam is not cheap. It comes with a $159,000 price tag. It has been this year's fundraising goal for Rebekka and the team at Our Kids.

"We launched this with a Grafton golf day, we have also fundraised through the Melbourne Cup luncheon and the SamsonChallenge, and we've got a few donations coming in. We're not quite there, but we're close," Rebekka said.

"To give context to the Retcam, they say that this is how Stevie Wonder became blind because he was a premature baby."

Dr Chris adds, "With this piece of equipment, you can avoid it fully. It keeps the babies local, and they will come back to the family quicker. If the Brisbane eye guys know we've got this equipment, they'll say, oh, this baby can go now, and you're going to have to do weekly eye checks over the next four weeks. We say, yep, we can do that. And in fact, you're going to be looking at them, and so they say, yeah, baby, can go back to the mother. Mother comes back to their family a month ahead."

This was the 19th Our Kids Golf Day. Each hole was sold twice, so 36 teams of four made their way around the Lismore golf course in good spirits and the occasional drink or two.

(Team Instyle Sleep Centre: Simon Mumford, Dave Bomba, Sharon Martin and Bill Graham)

Rebekka explained that the doctors and nurses see a need to help local children. She gets together with her team and builds a plan to raise enough funds to be able to purchase that piece of medical equipment.

"I think people in their hearts want to be generous. They know that there are families that are adversely affected by premature babies, and they want to help. There's something beautiful about that."

"The blokes that are playing today, will read about someone in the nursery in the future using that piece of equipment and say, oh, it landed. I've always said to Bek and the board that I don't care how much money is raised on any given event, I just want people to really enjoy themselves so they'll tell their friends and they'll be involved next year.

The 20th anniversary of the Our Kids Golf Day promises to be bigger, better and extremely well supported..