It was 1975 and I had just finished school. I needed a job; something to take me up to the start of University. In those days the State Public Service offered a smorgasbord of choice for job seekers. Given the selection on offer I chose a Clerical Assistant position with the Forests Commission Victoria. I liked the idea of working with trees and the office was centrally located at No.1 Treasury Place.

The job turned out to be in the Registry and my task was to deliver the internal mail around head office – the ‘trolley girl’. It was a brilliant introduction to the Forests Commission. Within weeks I knew my way around the department through Stores, Accounts, Operations, Fire Management right up to the luxury of the Chairman and Commissioners’ offices. Not only that, I learned the names of the 7 Divisional Foresters and the 47 or so District Foresters and their locations. It didn’t take too long before I figured out where I wanted to be.

When a Draughting Assistant position became vacant in the Estates Branch I made the jump. My job involved mainly the preparation of Bee-Keeping and Grazing Licences and although in hindsight it was fairly mundane it set me on a path that has given me pleasure ever since. I honed my lettering skills and was entrusted with making notations on the beautiful old linen County and Parish Plans. I was fascinated by the names - Bingo Munjie South, Cut Paw Paw and Errinundra to name just a few. I quickly formed an appreciation for the skills of cartographers past.

My commitment to Uni. dwindled and, more importantly, I could now choose to study part-time at RMIT while I continued to work. I enrolled in a Certificate of Technology - Cartography. This gave me the leg-up I needed to attain the job of Draughting Officer DR1 in the Draughting Branch.

The Art and Science of Graphically Representing a Geographical Area

Before I continue my story, perhaps I can detour into a little background on Cartography. From the earliest civilisations humans have wanted to know where they were in relation to their surroundings. As early as 600BCE Babylonians produced a world map showing Babylon at the centre surrounded by nearby regions and an ocean.

The true birth of Cartography is credited to Ptolemy who in the Second Century CE devised a coordinate system of latitude and longitude for accurate navigation and was the first to use perspective projection to display the globe on a two-dimensional surface.

Skipping through the centuries the development of mapping improved with each new mathematical mind, fine-tuning the view so to speak. By the Industrial Revolution mass printing enabled cartographers to produce maps for tourists, facilitating a practical value as well as an artistic value.

During the wars of the 20th Century maps were crucial in determining military strategy. Now in the 21st century computers, satellites, Geographic Information Systems and the Internet have introduced a new era of accuracy. These days more people than ever have access to their precise location relative to their surroundings, via their smart phones.

So, back to the Draughting Branch in the late-1970s, before the technological advances we are so familiar with today.

If the existence of the Forests Commission was to sustainably manage Victoria’s forests, the role of the Draughting Branch was to provide the mapping resources to do this. Maps that showed the State Forest boundaries, the plantations, the species planted within, the native forests, the opportunities for recreation, for fire management, and to enable the payment of contractors. All these maps were produced by the Draughting Branch.

In those early days I was involved in preparing survey plans; learning the importance of precision and accuracy. The Draughting Branch worked with the Commission’s Survey Branch to provide the final plans relating to either purchase or excision of land for State Forests. These plans were then published in the Government Gazette. My aim was to get my plans back from the Chief Surveyor with only a handful of corrections to be made.

For some reason Draughting was seen to be a bit of a ‘man’s world’, the only other women in the Branch seemed to be confined to painting the colours on plantation maps and providing dyeline prints as required. I appreciate the encouragement I received from my senior officers at the time.¹

Mapping was a very different process back in the late-1970s to what it is now. I’m not sure exactly of the Draughting Branch’s relationship with the Lands Department or the Army except that most of our thematic maps were derived from a base map that had been part of the standard Crown Lands and Survey coverage of Victoria at the specific scales of 1:25,000, 1:50,000 and 1:100,000.

Around this time the Forests Commission produced a revised version of the One-Mile-to-One-Inch series of maps covering the eastern section of Victoria, starting from Genoa. The area had been covered by aerial photography which provided the necessary overlap of the frames, thereby permitting a three-dimensional image to be created when viewed through a stereoscope (similar to the craze of 3D glasses supplied by cinemas in later decades).

Using the stereoscope, roads, tracks, stream patterns and landscape features were marked up in chinagraph pencil, and the information was then transferred to a base map using a ‘Sketchmaster'.

This latter device used a series of mirrors which allowed the photo image to be viewed overlaid onto the plotting sheet. Once the scale was corrected the information could be transferred onto the base. When it came to drawing the map there were a number of instruments at our disposal - a ruling pen, a swivel headed contour pen and, most terrifyingly, the double roading pen. This device required keeping the ink matched in both prongs of the pen, and the distance between them set to a standard, and then holding it upright to draw a perfectly smooth double line accurately onto the new map.

I’ve recently been reminded of the ‘rules’ when I viewed a copy of The Handbook of Conventional Signs and Symbols for Use in Forest Mapping and Plan Drawing published by the FCV in 1947, but still in use in my time. The line weight of every road and track still echoing in my mind as well as the particular colours of the timber species to be used on the Plantation Maps.

As my skills increased, I was incredibly proud to produce my first coloured tourist map, which was part of the Forests Commission series. For this project I was able to go on a field trip and actually check and assess the quality of tracks and accuracy of the facilities. The mapping process involved creating various layers - the road pattern, the stream pattern, the blocks of colour for land use and designations, and the type sheet. Every word on the map had to be specified in the fonts required and then sent to a typesetter. The list came back as an acetate sheet which was then waxed. Painstakingly, each road name, stream name, location name etc. was then cut out with a scalpel and placed in its position, the wax allowing adhesion but with the flexibility to move it if necessary. Once the layers were completed they were then photographed to negatives and dispatched to the Government Printer who made lithographic plates, using the 4-colour process to produce the finished product. My thrill was to visit the printer and give the final okay on the proofs before the presses stated to roll. One crusty employee of the Government Printer queried whether I should be allowed that responsibility and I clearly recall the exchange when my supervising draughtsman assured him it was my map and my right to approve it. Sal's First Map

Although these were coloured maps designed for recreational use, they were still very conventional and there was no deviation from the standard colour scheme. It was not until the mid-1980s that I worked on a map of the Royal Botanic Gardens that utilised hand-painted illustrations and an original colour scheme. Digital scanning was still unheard of.

As well as the pleasure of map making, I was given the opportunity to be part of the aerial photography operations that the Branch undertook. This was the process by which contractors received their payment. We would fly over the various logging coupes to photograph the cleared land in the format I described earlier that allowed for 3-D viewing once the photos were processed and calculations of areas.

Having gotten a taste for flying I was enthusiastic to be involved in the early days of aerial infrared bushfire mapping. An infrared camera was mounted in the floor of an aircraft and an image of the fire edge was generated as we flew over the fire ground at night. It was our job to transfer this information to a base map while in flight and then deliver it to the Fire Bosses on the ground, sometimes via a drop tube from the low flying aircraft. A far cry from today’s technology but, my goodness, it was exciting.

Through the numerous reconfigurations from Forests Commission Victoria, to Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands, to Department of Conservation and Environment I rose to the position of Draughting Officer DR4, I believe the first woman to occupy that title in the State Government. I resigned in 1990 to take up motherhood but I regard myself as being truly fortunate to have spent 16 wonderful years in my ‘brilliant career’.

¹ Draughting Branch was not alone. The first intake of women into the VSF (established in 1910) occurred in 1976. Ed.