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Early Life:
- Damien Peter Parer was born on the 1st of August 1912, the son of Teresa and John.
- His father was a keen gambler and was always discovering lucky' new combinations of numbers, after which he would head off to Monte Carlo for a few months and spend all of their money on poker and cigars. Despite this mild inconvenience, Damien enjoyed a carefree and happy childhood.

- He attended St. Stanislaus Catholic School for boys in the Blue Mountains. At St. Stainslaus, Damien, a shy, quiet boy, became a courageous, though inept boxer (his head would be going back while his body kept moving forwards, one contemporary recalled), earned the nickname gunner for his prowess at farting noisily during important exams, and, most importantly, became interested in photography.
- Damien's fascination with photography was sparked by a chance incident where he stumbled across a copy of The Australian Photographic Review. Impressed by the magnificent' cameras and the complicated technical jargon that accompanied them. Damien joined the school's camera club' and purchased a book entitled All About Photography. Sensitive about reading such an obscure book in front of the other boys, he would hide it under his coat until he could climb a tree that was tall enough to allow him to read it unseen. Despite his reluctance to reveal his passion for the subject, Damien had by this stage, decided that he wanted to become a photographer, dissuaded of his earlier ambition of growing up to be a priest.
- Although all of this seems basically irrelevant, Damien's early years were an important influence on his later behaviour. The predominately Irish priests at St Stanislaus instilled him with a vehement sense of anti-Briticism, which was an important factor in his decision to film in the pacific rather than European theatre of war, and with a passion for Catholicism, which helped him get through his many difficult times. Additionally, his Father's constant absence instilled Damien with the ability to be self-sufficient from an early age, and a healthy disrespect for authority, two other traits that were crucial to his later achievements.
- In 1929, Damien opted to renounce school, partly in protest of the appointment of a tyrannical new headmaster, partly in order to pursue a career in photography, and partly because he was sick of it.

Early adulthood:
Damien initially found the task of finding a job, an undertaking that was complicated by the onset of the Great Depression,

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