From "CSIRO research for Australia" (1962) pdf page 35:
"The Division of Forest Products was founded in 1928, under the leadership of the late Mr. Isaac Boas. At that time, Australia was paying enormous sums for imported timber, while the potential value of her own native timbers remained unrecognized.

The Division's research was directed from the beginning toward more effective use of timber resources, by reducing waste in forest, mill and factory; by reducing losses from decay and insect attack; and by improving for timber and pulp the quality of wood in the growing forest by the study of wood properties associated with tree breeding and siJvicultural treatment.

Even before the Division was founded, Australian scientists had shown that Australian eucalypt timbers could be used in pulp and paper making. The Division has from the outset supported its applied work with more basic research, and in the early days more fundamental investigations into the problems of paper making were started in collaboration with the pulp and paper manufacturing companies.

In 1936, when the Division moved to its present building in South Melbourne, it had become organized into sections of wood chemistry, timber seasoning, timber preservation, timber physics, timber mechanics, wood structure and timber utilization. Later, a plywood investigations section was established.

On the retirement of Mr. Boas in 1944, Mr. S. A. Clarke became Chief. He in turn retired in 1960 and was succeeded by the present Chief, Dr. H. E. Dadswell.

The Division's work has already made a great impact on the Australian timber industry. Large-scale manufacture of good quality kiln-dried hardwood has followed improved kiln design arising from its research. Many of the problems incurred in using local hardwoods instead of imported softwoods for building have been solved. The work of the timber preservation section has enabled the life of such things as telegraph poles and railway sleepers to be greatly extendedthe Postmaster General's Department alone estimates its savings from this work at £2,000,000 per year. Improved plywood, new information on timber engineering design, efficient use of short lengths of timberall these are further examples of industrial applications born of the Division's applied research.

The Division functions as an information centre for all matters affecting wood use, handling some 12,000 enquiries in a year. An increasing amount of the Division's work is being sponsored by industry, which is at the present time contributing twenty-five thousand pounds a year for research."