Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 555 Private (Pte) John Joseph Goulding, 31st Battalion, from South Brisbane, Queensland. A 32 year old labourer prior to enlisting on 30 August 1915, he embarked for overseas with B Company from Melbourne aboard HMAT Wandilla on 9 November 1915. He was captured at Fromelles, France on 19 July 1916 and whilst being held by the Germans as a prisoner of war, he died that same day. After the war, his grave could not be located and he was commemorated on the Villers Bretonneux Memorial, France. In 2008 a burial ground was located at Pheasant Wood, France containing the bodies of 250 British and Australian soldiers including Pte Goulding. All of the remains were reburied in the newly created Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery. At the time of the official dedication of the new cemetery on 19 July 2010, ninety-six of the Australians had been identified through a combination of anthropological, archaeological, historical and DNA information. Work is continuing on identifying the other remains relocated from the burial ground and buried in the new cemetery as unknown soldiers. Pte Goulding is among those who have not been identified and his name remains on the Villers Bretonneux Memorial. 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.