Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of A W Cooke, believed to be 523 Lance Sergeant Arthur William Cooke, No 1 Mining Corps from Ballarat, Victoria. A 31 year old bank clerk prior to enlisting on 13 July 1915, he embarked for overseas with No 2 Company from Sydney, NSW on 20 February 1916 aboard HMAT Ulysses (A38). After disembarking at Marseilles on 5 May, he travelled by train to northern France. He was taken ill in January 1917 and hospitalised in France and then in England for the next six months. On returning to France, he joined No 1 Australian Tunnelling Company and remained with them until he went back to England in April 1918. He arrived back in Australia on 10 March 1919. [See also image DASEY1973.] 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.