Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2571 Private (Pte) George Bickley, 23rd Battalion. A labourer from Drouin, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Bickley embarked with the 6th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAYT Ulysses on 27 October 1915. Later transferring to the 58th Battalion he was killed in action in Belgium on 14 October 1917, aged 31, and having no known grave, is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium. 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 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.