Alfred Oscar Lawrence

Sixteen students, including Alf Lawrence, representing all states, were enrolled as the first intake to the fledgling School at Adelaide University in 1926 under Principal Norman William Jolly,[2][3] with their second year at a newly established campus in the Canberra suburb of Yarralumla under Charles Edward Lane-Poole.

However, the heady days of the paddle steamers like the Alexander Arbuthnot plying the river trade hauling logs on barges to company sawmills at places like Koondrook were coming to an end.

The Black Friday bushfires on 13 January 1939 where nearly 2 million hectares burnt, 69 sawmills were destroyed, 71 people died and several towns were entirely obliterated became a landmark in the history of the State of Victoria and a major turning point in the story of the Forests Commission.

[12][13] After the sudden death of Alfred Vernon Galbraith, in 1949 the Victorian State Government appointed Lawrence as one of the three commissioners to lead the Forests Commission joining with new Chairman Finton George Gerraty and Charles Montgomery Ewart.

[5] Gerraty died suddenly on 25 June 1956[14] during a difficult period for the Commission, amidst serious allegations of financial mismanagement of its Newport seasoning works,[15] and after some delay, Lawrence was finally elevated to Chairman in December 1956, a position he held until his retirement in July 1969.

A member of his local Masonic Lodge, Melbourne Rotary and the Institute of Foresters of Australia (IFA), and from 1955 Lawrence occupied various leadership positions with the Victorian Boy Scouts, including Deputy Chief Commissioner in 1968.

[1][17] Alf Lawrence retired the day before his 65th birthday on Saturday 19 July 1969 after a career spanning nearly 50 years since entering the Victorian School of Forestry as a 16-year-old student with his last official duty to open new facilities at the Korweinguboora Recreation Reserve nestled in the Wombat State Forest.