Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Portrait of Mark Smoothy copied for the Cobram Honour Roll. The soldier is probably 2936 Private (Pte) Mark Smoothy, a blacksmith from Cobram, Victoria, prior to enlistment. Pte Smoothy embarked from Melbourne with the 6th Reinforcements, 2nd Pioneer Battalion, aboard HMAT Port Lincoln (A17) on 20 October 1916. He was killed in action at Sailly-le-sec, France, on 13 June 1918. During the First World War the Cobram and District Soldiers Fund initiated a project to create a Cobram Honour Roll. It was to include portraits of servicemen who had links to the Cobram area. The Fund arranged for portraits to be copied by the Darge Photographic Company at its Collins Street Studio, Melbourne. Around 100 copy prints were supplied by the Darge company but it is not known if the roll was ever constructed. In the 1930s, the Australian War Memorial purchased 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. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.