From "CSIRO research for Australia" (1962) pdf pages 38-39:
"A Section was established in 1945 to undertake research into building materials and their use. This work was complementary to that of the Commonwealth Experimental Building Station which was established in 1944 to experiment with new ideas in building construction. The Builidng Materials Research Section became the Division of Building Materails Research in 1950, with Mr Ian Langlands, the founder of the Section, as the first Chief. The laboratory is situated at Highett, a suburb of Melbourne.

The Division has built up a programme of research into the properties and uses of bricks, stone, tiles, concrete, glass, building boards, fibrous plaster, insutlating materials, and organic materials. An architecural physics laboratory concentrates on acoustics and the more basic problems of heating and cooling buildings. Ever since 1945 an information section has been needed to cope with a flood of enquiries (now some six thousand five hundred a year) from building trade and manufacturers of the building trade.

The Division has already achieved some notable successes. It has, for example, discovered that some Australian clays and shales can be processed and then used as aggregates for concrete. The product is much lighter than the sand and stone it replaces, with the result that the concrete is lighter and more useful as a building material. The Division is also seeking to provide the technical background for the manufacture in Australia of aerated concretes and mortars.

Since Australia is extraordinarily rich in gypsum reserves, scientific and technical investigations are being made into the use of gypsum as a building material, particularly in the form of fibrous plaster, an extensively used lining material unique to Australia.

Acoustics research has Jed to the successful design and construction of sound reinforcements systems in large halls and in open spaces, such as the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

A good deal of the Division's work is investigating the causes of defects in buildings and ways of overcoming them. It has, for example, made a valuable study of the expansion of bricks and has published recommendations for preventing consequent damage to brickwork. Work on bituminous roofing materials has provided the answers to many of the problems which were previously encountered with bituminous flat roofing.

In many different ways the Division helps the builder and manufacturer. Realizing this, the building materials industry is now sponsoring research in the Division by contributing several thousand pounds each year."