Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of Private (Pte) Ernest Ballinger 29th Battalion AIF a bee farmer of Dunkeld near Hamilton, Victoria. He enlisted on 20 July 1915 and embarked on HMT Ascanius 10 November 1915 initially for Suez and then on to Marseilles, disembarking on 23 June 1916. He was captured at Fleurbaix 30 July 1916 and interned as a prisoner of war (POW) at Gefangenenlager Dulmen Germany. He was admitted to hospital at Friedrichsfeld on 8 June 1918 and died of meningitis on 15 June 1918 at 23 years of age. 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 a unit name, for each negative. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.