Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 45 Private (Pte) Alf James Evans, 31st Battalion. A porter from Emerald, Qld prior to enlistment, Pte Evans embarked with the Regimental Signallers from Melbourne aboard HMAT Wandilla on 9 November 1915. He died of cerebro spinal meningitis on 26 December 1915 in Ismailia, Egypt, aged 19, and was buried in the Ismailia War Memorial Cemetery. His step-brother, 30 Corporal Harold Owen Cook, 26th Battalion, was killed in action on 5 August 1916, and his brother-in-law 348 Sergeant Walter William Dumbrell, 41st Battalion, was killed in action on 19 April 1918. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had the concession to take photographs at the Broadmeadows and Seymour army camps during the First World War. In the 1930s, the Australian War Memorial purchased the original glass negatives from Algernon Darge, along with the photographers' notebooks. The notebooks contain brief details, usually a surname or unit name, for each negative.