Harry’s early life was in a sawmill community in the Buxton area where his father worked as a faller for Cook’s mill (managed by and known as Bramfield’s mill). He was seven when the 1939 fires caused the evacuation of the families from the mill settlement into Buxton and the surrounding farm houses.

His first job was as a ‘swampy’ with Gould’s logging contractor in the Marysville area. He then variously worked loading logs onto trucks, as a dozer driver, a faller and as a truck driver for a few years carting timber to Healesville. Harry then moved with his young family to Gelantipy where he worked in the timber industry for three or four years before returning to Healesville.

Eventually, he began working with the Forests Commission, raising seedlings in the Narbethong nursery, until the nursery was disbanded when Phytophthora was found in the soil. He was then offered a position in the Commission’s 1975-1977 Foremans School. Harry went on to oversee logging contractors and recreation activities in the Marysville District, as well as having oversight of regeneration and rehabilitation work in the Ash forests.