Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3898 Acting Corporal (A/Cpl) Charles Christian Olsen. A sawmill worker from Nar Nar Goon, Victoria prior to enlistment, A/Cpl Olsen embarked with the 9th Reinforcements, 22nd Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Warilda on 8 February 1916. He later transferred to the 4th Divisional Ammunition Column where he was appointed as a Driver. He was later hospitalised suffering from pleurisy. After recovering he re-joined his unit and on 12 June 1917 he was killed in action and buried in the Westhof Farm Cemetery, Ypres, Belgium. 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 unit name, for each negative.