The former Australian Forestry School is situated at the intersection of Banks and Schlich Streets, Yarralumla. It comprises the school and museum buildings, the director’s residence, Westridge House, and formal landscape surroundings. The main school building was designed in Stripped Classical style by JH Kirkpatrick assisted by HM Rolland, against the backdrop of TCG (Charles) Weston’s landscaping of the Commonwealth Nursery and the arboretum now called Westbourne Woods.
Central to the main building is a magnificent domed octagonal hall. Australian timbers donated by Tasmania, Victoria, NSW and South Australia were used throughout the building for the panelling, flooring, and ribs for the dome.
A national forestry school was proposed at the first Interstate Forestry Conference in 1911, and accepted at a Premiers’ Conference in 1920. Federal Cabinet approved the school in 1925, and agreed with Charles Lane Poole, Conservator of Forests in Western Australia 1916-1921, that it should be established in Canberra to take advantage of Weston’s pioneering research on tree species, especially conifers.
The Australian Forestry School superseded the University of Adelaide’s forestry school course established in 1911. It began at the University of Adelaide in 1926 moving to Canberra in 1927 under the control of the Commonwealth Forestry Bureau. The course consisted of academic study with practical work in the arboretum, Yarralumla Nursery and surrounding forests, and an annual camp in a different state each year.The school was reconstituted as the Department of Forestry, Australian National University in 1965, and moved to the ANU campus in 1968.
The first Australian Rhodes Scholar, Norman Jolly, was appointed Principal in 1926 but within the year became NSW Commissioner of Forests. Charles Lane Poole was concurrently appointed Acting Principal of the School and Commonwealth Inspector-General of Forests, 1927 to 1944.
Student accommodation in 1927 consisted of 27 lined cubicles and three empty houses in Solander Place to be used for dining, recreation and ablutions. These were replaced in the 1950s by a barracks-like building popularly known as ‘The Waldorf’, which was demolished after the school moved to ANU.
The site is now the CSIROForestry Precinct, the Commonwealth's centre for forestry and timber research in Australia. The precinct is a complex of buildings, arboretum, nursery and tennis courts, and is important for an array of scientific achievements, including the Pinus radiata breeding program as part of the Australian Tree Seed program.
Westridge House, also known as the Tudor House, was built in 1927 as the residence of the Principal of the Australian Forestry School. Lane Poole was allowed to choose the architect, and was probably influenced by his wife Ruth, an interior designer who redecorated the suite at Yarralumla that was used by the Duke and Duchess of York in 1927, and decorated the interiors of both The Lodge and Westridge House.
The house is a unique blend of Tudor Revival style and radical functionalism, and is the only Canberra house designed by Melbourne architect Harold Desbrowe Annear. Like the Forestry School building, it was designed to show the best of Australian timbers, and has jarrah floorboards and exposed ceiling beams. It also has several innovations, including Australia’s first flush doors, provision for built-in cupboards and furniture, windows that slide vertically into the wall cavity, and fly screens that automatically slide into place when windows are opened.
The house has been used by CSIRO as offices and a conference and training centre. It has twice been restored, after a fire in the 1970s and again in 2000-2006 to comply with obligations imposed by its listing on the Register of National Estates.
MORE INFORMATION
Carron, L.T. A Brief History of the Australian Forestry School, AFS Reunion 2000 Inc, 2000.
Cosgrove, Carol
‘The Australian Forestry School’ and ‘Westridge House’, Heritage in Trust, Summer 1999, pp. 19-20. ACTHL Location: H 720.9947 HERI
Gray, John
‘Charles Weston: Pioneer of Afforestation and Conservation at the Federal Capital’, Canberra Historical Journal, ns No. 44, September 1999, pp. 9-18. ACTHL Location: H 994.7 CANB
Jacobs, M.R. ‘Forests and Forestry in the Australian Capital Territory’, in Addresses Presented to the Society. Canberra, Canberra and District Historical Society, 1955-1965, pp. 337-354. ACTHL Location: H 994.7 CAN
Murphy, Greg
‘House Should be Preserved’. Canberra Historical Journal, no. 8, September 1981, p. 10. ACTHL Location: H 994.7 CANB
Rout, Tony
‘Growing with the Capital’. Canberra Historical Journal, ns no. 5, March 1980, pp. 24-30. ACTHL Location: H 994.7 CANB
