The following is based on discussions Ted had with Russ (his uncle) over a couple of years.
Trevor Ritchie, Russ's son, graduated from the VSF in 1970.

Russell James Ritchie was born in April 1924 . He was the grandson of James Stewart Ritchie, who was Forest Foreman of the Ballarat-Creswick State Forest, assisting John La Gerche, beginning in 1890. Russ was the son of William Ritchie, who attended the VSF in 1912 and then had a long career in the Forests Commission Victoria (FCV) at Castlemaine, Bright (for 25 years), Creswick and Melbourne. So Russ came from a family involved in management of the forested public land in Victoria, and it is perhaps not surprising that he chose a career in forestry.

He attended Bright Consolidated School until the end of Year 8 and then went to Melbourne and attended Melbourne High School, while boarding with two different families in Carnegie, in order to study the mathematics and science subjects he needed to go on to study forestry. He particularly remembered one teacher who inspired him to have a lifelong interest in geology.

Russ entered the VSf in 1942 and graduated in 1944. During the long summer holidays he was answerable to the wartime Manpower Department to contribute work where needed, but he was able to return home to Bright and work for his father, the District Forester, as the Towerman at Clearspot, near Bright. As there were no roads he had to walk from home uphill about five kilometres to the firetower each morning, and downhill to home each night. This was two or three years after the 1939 bushfires in Victoria, which burnt widely including in the Bright area, and the risk of fires to the young pine plantations and the community, and the value of a fire lookout in summer, was well understood.

His initial job with the Forests Commission Victoria was Forest Assessment. This was at the end of the Second World War, but forestry was considered by the government to be an essential industry for producing raw materials for the war effort, so he would have been encouraged to practice his new skills rather than join the Armed Forces. For two or three years he searched the bush for high quality sawlogs, within the areas proposed to be flooded in dams constructed for Melbourne’s water supply, in the Upper Yarra catchment, and in the general area of Neerim, Marysville and Warburton. This was done by walking straight lines on a compass bearing with an assistant, dragging a surveyor’s chain to measure the distance, and stopping at intervals to note and measure tree types and sizes, and later to prepare maps showing the results. It often took a full day, or even two days, to walk up and down hills and across rivers between the existing sparse roads. Russ spent months living in a tent at a camp supplied with weekly rations by a man with a packhorse. Russ reflected that they found plenty of good sawlogs to keep the sawmills busy, but that the hidden valleys of prime forest giants they had been sent to find were the figment of someone’s imagination. He also recalled getting a ride on a log truck, I think sitting on top of the load of logs, to get to Melbourne so he could catch a train to Creswick to visit his future wife Evelyn Hepworth. He met Evelyn at Creswick during his VSF years.

Russ was next posted to Mirboo North, where he was involved in pine plantation establishment. He was newly married, and with his handyman skills he converted an FCV hut into a home sufficient for a married couple to live in, if somewhat short of the luxuries expected today.

In July 1949, he was promoted to District Forester – Stanley Plantation, and moved to Stanley, near Beechworth, where they lived at the pine tree nursery and residence in the middle of the pine plantation, perhaps four or five kilometres from town and the nearest neighbour, and an isolated setting for Ev while Russ was away working each day.

Back then, a graduating forester received an Associate Diploma of Forestry from Creswick, and it was common to undertake an original research project in forestry and write a thesis, which would be assessed and, if suitable, a Diploma of Forestry Victoria was awarded. Russ received his Diploma in 1952, after writing a thesis which I believe involved constructing a volume table for pine trees, based on analysis of hundreds of tree measurements, so that later foresters could make a few sample tree measurements and accurately predict the amount of timber present.

After six years at Stanley, and with a young family, Russ was transferred to Beech Forest in the Otways (a place noted for its high rainfall) as District Forester – Aire Valley Plantation, commencing September 1955.

After two and a half years, on 30 April 1958, he moved down the hill to Gellibrand (halfway to Colac), as the result of an FCV restructure in which plantation districts and the native state forest districts were combined, and he took over the larger territory which included the Beech Forest area.

Four years later, in May 1962, Russ became District Forester at Trentham. Here he was involved in early well-planned fuel reduction burning operations, which involved lighting a grid of fires in the forest under cool weather conditions in Spring or Autumn to reduce the amount of fuel on the forest floor for fires occurring in summer, making them less difficult to control. He was in charge of the pine nursery which raised pine seedlings for planting around a number of parts of Victoria. Trentham residents had an unofficial expectation of the resident of the FCV house next to the office and across the road from the community swimming pool that they would manage the water filtration system at the pool, collect pool chemicals from the railway goods yard at Woodend and generally look after the pool, which Russ did.

Russ was promoted to Assistant Divisional Forester at Horsham, giving him oversight of the Western Division, including the Grampians and the Big and Little Desert and red gum areas north to Mildura and Nyah on the Murray River, to the pine plantations being established around Heywood and just across the border from Mt Gambier.

Next he was transferred to Ballarat as Assistant Divisional Forester, and he oversaw forest management and bushfire control around the Otways, Ballarat, Creswick, Daylesford, Trentham and Macedon Districts.

From 1969 to 1971, Russ took on a specialist Fire Protection Officer role in Melbourne, and he was instrumental in introducing new firefighting tools and establishing wide use of calculators of fire danger, and rates of fire spread, and also meters used for determining suitable conditions for planned burning.

In October 1971 he was promoted to what he considered to be the best job going, which was Divisional Forester for North East Victoria based at Wangaratta, and leading the forest and fire management of State Forest in the Corryong, Tallangatta, Bright, Myrtleford and Mansfield Districts. He stayed in that job for 14 years, until a major government restructure saw an end to the FCV as it merged into a broader resources and conservation department. This change prompted Russ to retire in 1985.

Russ was a recipient of the National Medal, recognizing his long and faithful dedication to protecting the community through firefighting. In forty years he probably never got a summer holiday at the beach with the rest of the family, due to his need to be ready to respond to fires. He retained his keen interest in forested public land management and the harvesting and regeneration of forests, and managing bushfires, even at the age of 99. He was a life member of Forestry Australia, previously called the Institute of Foresters of Australia, being a member for 64 years. In retirement he joined the Forests Commission Retired Personnel Association, and regularly attended meetings until the logistics of travelling to Melbourne became too difficult.

Russ Ritchie
2019