Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3462 Private (Pte) William Joseph Park. A labourer from Highton via Geelong, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Park embarked with the 9th Reinforcements, 60th Battalion from Sydney on HMAT Port Melbourne on 16 July 1917. Following his arrival in England he developed a throat abscess and on 23 September 1917, aged 18, he succumbed to his illness and was buried in the Compton Chamberlayne Cemetery, Wiltshire, England. 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