Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Group portrait of 2641 Corporal (Cpl) George Francis Fineran, 7th Battalion (left, with moustache), 2789 Private (Pte) Fred George Starling, 8th Battalion (right), and Pte Starling’s sisters Beatrice Maud Fineran, known as Maud Fineran (b. 1878) (left) and Esther Valerie Starling (b. 1899). The two men, both orchardists, lived in Yan Yean Rd near Diamond Creek, Victoria. Pte Starling enlisted on 16 July 1915, and Cpl Fineran enlisted on 2 August 1915. They embarked with the 6th Reinforcements, 24th Battalion on 27 October 1915, arriving together in Egypt in November 1915, before being separated and sent to France. Cpl Fineran was killed at the Battle of Pozières on 25 July 1916. Pte Starling survived the war, receiving two awards - the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) - and was promoted to Lance Corporal. He returned to Australia on 24 August 1918. Maud Fineran was the eldest of the Starling siblings, and had been married to George Fineran since 1903. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a permit 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, and not all people are named in the notebook.