Thompson, Murray

"The past is never fully gone. It is absorbed into the present and the future. It stays to shape what we are and what we do."
Sir William Deane, Governor-General of Australia, Inaugural Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, August 1996.

Details: Created: 02 September 2020; Last Updated: 12 May 2025

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Murray Thompson

Murray graduated from the VSF in 1935 and he gained the Dip.For.Vic. with a thesis on Forest Fire Prevention and Control in the Cann Valley Forest District.

He was in Narbethong in 1936 and he became an Assistant Forester Taggerty (Narbethong) in 1937. Other early postings were to Echuca, Assessment (Orbost), Broadford, Tanjil Bren, Cohuna, and Kinglake. He was the District Forester (DFO) at Cann River (Noorinbee) from September 1945 to 1951; DFO Beechworth 1951 -1953; DFO Heathcote 1953-1955 and DFO Beaufort 1955-1959.

In 1959 he was appointed Assistant Divisional Forester at Healesville, and in August 1966 he became the Divisional Forester at Ballarat.

He retired in 1975.

"Let us regard the forest as an inheritance, not to be destroyed or devastated, but to be wisely used, reverently honoured and carefully maintained. Let us regard the forest as a gift, entrusted to any of us only for transient care, to be surrendered to posterity as an unimpaired property, increased in riches and augmented in blessings, to pass as a sacred patrimony from generation to generation."

Baron Ferdinand von Mueller - Suggestions on the Maintenance, Creation and Enrichment of Forests (1879)

Murray Thompson

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