Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of Second Lieutenant (2nd Lt) Walter Fisher, 7th Battalion from Frankston, Victoria. A 34 year old plumber prior to enlisting on 25 September 1914, he embarked for overseas as a Sergeant (service number 283) with A Company from Melbourne on 19 October 1914 aboard HMAT Hororata. On the day of the landing at Gallipoli (25 April 1915) he was wounded in action and evacuated to Alexandria for medical treatment. After recovering five weeks later, he returned to Gallipoli and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 14 July 1915. He was wounded in action for the second time on 9 August 1915 and evacuated to Cairo. His wounds were such that he was returned to Australia, arriving on 1 October 1915. 2nd Lt Fisher left the AIF on 20 March 1916, medically unfit for further service. 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.