Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 354 Private (Pte) William Copeland, 21st Battalion. A butcher from Launceston, Tasmania prior to enlistment, Pte Copeland had previously served with the Queensland Bushmen in the Boer War and embarked with B Company from Melbourne on HMAT Ulysses on 10 April 1915. Whilst at Gallipoli he was declared as missing and a subsequent court of enquiry determined that he had drowned near Lemnos Island on 2 September 1915 when the ship he was on, HMT Southland, was torpedoed and sunk. He is commemorated on the Helles Memorial, Turkey. 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.