Joining the Victorian Public Service (VPS) as an Administrative Officer in 1964, Paul worked in several agencies before joining the FCV in 1982. Due to deteriorating health, Paul left the VPS in 2003 after an almost 40-year career.

Over his working life, Paul developed a knowledge and understanding of Victoria’s bureaucratic heritage, and the documents and systems that underpin its legacy. During his later career, and in retirement, Paul has assisted bureaucrats, authors, students, researchers, NGOs (including, importantly, the FCRPA) and others wanting to draw on this valuable historical resource. Paul continues to be an essential ‘go-to’ specialist for those interested in Victoria’s forest history.

The records below are available here primarily because of Paul's endeavours.

The following documents and links provide information about, and access to, records relating to the Forest Commission Victoria and earlier agencies.

Forest History in Victoria: A Guide to Government Records 1836-1994, Heather McRae, Conservation and Natural Resources (1994). This guide directs readers to relevant publications, libraries, archives, and organisations for further information, and covers original unpublished records such as files, volumes, index cards, maps, plans, photographs, films and computer records, with a particular focus on records of the former Forests Commission of Victoria, 1919-87.

Note: this guide gives 240-250 Vic Pde as the location of many records which were transferred to the PRO in 2004. This is difficult to confirm from the new long VA 534 list of FCV records at PRO with new and possibly more correct or alternate names, and their VPRS nos. Until corrections can be done and the PRO fixes their website, any forestry researchers may seek help by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Public Records Office Victoria, Series VPRS 11563 - This series constitutes the general correspondence files created by the Department of State Forests (FCV) during the period 1920-1985 and archived in 1998.

The FCRPA holds a number of documents at the Beechworth Museum.

The spreadsheet available below may help you identify records by location.

Location

Where the hell are:

Other Forestry Records

Search the Spreadsheets - Ctrl H will open a Find and Replace window in the spreadsheet. Enter your search term/s and then use the Find button (bottom left) to find relevant records one at a time. Note that you can download any spreadsheet as, among other file types, an Excel spreadsheet or a PDF. Look under the File menu..

After the pre 1919 records in VPRS 1472 were retrieved from the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), Peter Evans typed the original list and Paul did some editing which has produced the list below.

Files pre-1919

During 2022 and 2023 Paul edited the lists in VPRS 11563 of the files remaining from 1920 up to 1977. Although two of the series both cover the years 1971-1977, they provide different details for researchers.

DEECA paid an agency to type a list from VPRS 11731 that contained the File Title/File Location Cards for all FCV Head Office files that were created from 1971 to 1985, and box numbers if possibly archived in 1998. This list of 39,000 file titles has been reformatted into three spreadsheets (1971-1975, 1976-1980 and 1981-1985), with spelling and other mistakes corrected, for easier management.