Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Portrait of Lieutenant (Lt) Burther or Burcher, 23rd Battalion, wearing ribbon bars indicating previous service. It is probably Lt Harvey Stephen Burcher, 8th Battalion, who had served in the Boer War. The reference to the 23rd Battalion is possibly an error as Burcher is also in photograph DAOF044 with another officer named King who was in the 23rd Battalion. A grazier from Goulburn, NSW, prior to enlistment, Lt Burcher embarked from Melbourne with the 7th Reinforcements aboard HMAT Demosthenes (A64) on 16 July 1915. He returned to Australia on 10 September 1917 suffering from arthritis in both knees. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a 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. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks. See also DAOF044.