Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3452 Private (Pte) William Thomas McDonald. A clerk from North Fitzroy, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte McDonald embarked with the 9th Reinforcements, 60th Battalion from Sydney on HMAT Port Melbourne on 16 July 1917. On 10 August 1918, aged 19, he was killed in action at Harbonnieres, France and was buried in the Rosieres Communal Cemetery Extension, France. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a 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.