Forests Commission Victoria
In December 1918, just weeks after the end of WW1, a comprehensive amendment to the Forests Act abolished the State Forest Department (SFD) and created the Forests Commission Victoria (FCV) with three Commissioners to lead a new independent organisation.
The key principals in the legislation are thought to have been derived from the earlier 1907 Act and include:
conservation, development and utilisation of the indigenous forests, based on sound forestry principals.
establishment of adequate exotic softwood plantations.
prosecution of essential research work concerning the natural products of the forests.
the need for an effective bushfire prevention and bushfire suppression organisation.
The new Commission was intended to be a “corporate and politically semi-independent body” maintained by a fixed annual grant of £40,000 from the Treasury.
Significantly, the new legislation provided for the establishment of a Forestry Fund so the Commission could raise its own revenue from timber sales and enter into loans to give it some capacity to implement its own policies and programs.
It seemed a genuine attempt by the Victorian State Government to place forestry at arms-length, on a sound long term and more scientific footing.
A worldwide search began in January 1919 for a candidate for the important new role of FCV Chairman with a salary of £1000 per year and over 100 applications were received.
With an eye to career advancement, Jones chose not to return to Ceylon after the War, and at the age of 32, applied on 3 February 1919 for the Chairmanship of the Forests Commission Victoria.
Jones was appointed after a State Cabinet Meeting on 24 June 1919, with the offer being cabled to London the next day.
On 4 July 1919, eight days after receiving notification, he married Elsie Veronica Farmer in London.
Getting a passage to Australia presented significant logistical problems in the immediate post war period but Lieutenant General Sir John Monash was confidentially approached to hold back some Australian officers to make space for the couple.
After some delays, on 20 October, Jones and his wife sailed on the Morea which arrived in Melbourne on 28 November.
Other Forests Commissioners were Hugh Robert MacKay and William James Code, with Alfred Vernon Galbraith as Secretary.
Mackay brought huge experience and had previously been a Conservator of Forests, a Senior Inspector, Secretary to the Royal Commission of 1897-1901, and had drafted the Bill on which the 1907 Act to create the State Forest Department was based.
The second position was first offered to well-known Australian Forester Charles Lane Poole but he must have turned it down and Code took the role.
Code had worked in the Forests Branch of the Lands Department before 1900 and later became Chairman in 1925 when Jones left for NZ.
Galbraith was later appointed Chairman in 1927 and remained in the position until his death in 1949.
Owen Jones first priorities as foundation Chairman of the new Forests Commission were to put the organisation on a secure commercial footing, introduce sound and sustainable forestry principals as well as securing professionally trained staff. The Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick had opened earlier in 1910.
He said:Forests must be developed by roads, tramways or railways, they must be cultivated and improved so that their volume production reaches a higher standard, and above all, they must be so regulated as to produce constant and equal yield, so that local industries may be brought into being by the assurance of unfailing supplies. It is in this that lays the chief function of the forester.
