Arthur left school early and was working with a surveyor in Little Collins when he attended a talk by Owen Jones about the Creswick course. He entered the VSF in 1926. His first posting was to the box-ironbark forests of Bendigo where he went to work by tram. After some time in Assessment in Erica, Bruthen, Trentham and Korweinguboora he was posted in 1936 to Woods Point where he set up his accommodation in the court house. There he supervised the local sawmills and undertook planning for roading.  At Woods Point, royalty was paid by the mills on the sawn timber as it left the yard – a most inefficient system as it led to a lot of wastage. Elsewhere in the State, royalty was paid on the timber ‘in the round’. After several more field postings, in 1951 Arthur was appointed to Melbourne as Forest Economist where he calculated the royalties for all the hardwood millers. He maintained that the Royalty Equation System developed in 1949 was over-simplified and was frustrated that the Forests Commission would not charge a reasonable royalty for timber – something the sawmillers were able to forestall due to their representation to the Minister. In 1966 he joined Forest Management where he evaluated land for purchase for pines until his retirement in 1974.