An initial inventory of Australian foresters’ lives

An initial inventory of foresters’ lives was prepared by entering the digitised obituaries of 186 foresters onto the National Centre of Biography’s website, where they complemented the entries for a further 20 foresters in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Obituaries were taken from forestry journals, newsletters and newspapers. The inventory includes about 8–10% of the population of Australia’s past foresters, with obituaries dating from 1900 to 2015. The content of the inventory is discussed in four periods: establishing state forestry, building state forestry, post-war expansion, and fracturing. The possibility of extending the initial inventory using publications and oral histories, including those of living foresters, is discussed.