Because work was in short supply in Melbourne in 1939 due to the Depression, 16-year old Fred ‘bought’ his first job for 10 shillings from an employment shop in Queen Street in Melbourne. That job was with Richards’ sawmill at Mount Matlock which was milling Alpine Ash killed by the 1939 fires.

Soon after, with the outbreak of war, many of the men from Richards’ mill joined the Australian Forestry Company and went to Scotland. Being under-aged for the military, Fred went to work as a faller for Anderson’s sawmill in the Cumberland area which was drawing on the Mountain Ash forest in the Big River valley. That mill was supplying timber to the American forces in the Pacific theatre of the war.

Then, for a couple of years, Fred worked for the Forests Commission as a bulldozer driver building roads in the Delatite country of Mansfield. After that he was a logging contractor in the Kinglake forest, a wharfie and then trained as plumber, the trade he maintained in St Albans from 1955/56 until his retirement.