From "CSIRO research for Australia" (1962):

"Three years after the foundation of C.S.I.R. in 1926 a prominent New South Wales grazier, Mr. F. D. (later Sir Frederick) McMaster, gave the Council £20,000 for the establishment of an animal health laboratory. The Division of Animal Health came into being in January, 1930, with Dr. J. A. Gilruth, formerly Professor of Veterinary Science at Melbourne University, as the first Chief. It consisted of a team of scientists working at the McMaster Animal Health Laboratory, which was built in the grounds of Sydney University, a second group at a field station near Townsville, loaned by the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock, and in Melbourne a number of previously unattached veterinary scientists who were located in university laboratories.

In 1935 Dr. Gilruth retired, and was succeeded as Chief by another distinguished veterinary pathologist and bacteriologist, Dr. L. B. Bull. Shortly afterwards the Division obtained a lease of land and buildings in the grounds of the Melbourne University Veterinary Research Institute at Parkville, Victoria. The Parkville laboratory was used
initially for the study of contagious diseases of farm animals. At the McMaster Laboratory a programme of research into the parasites of sheep was developed under the leadership of Dr. I. Clunies-Ross, later to become Sir Ian Clunies-Ross, the first Chairman of C.S.I.R.O. Work at the Townsville station ceased in 1936, but the Division acquired new facilities including the McMaster Field Station at Badgery's Creek, New South Wales (1936), the 'Gilruth Plains' Field Station at Cunnamulla, Queensland (1937), and a new laboratory for the study of infectious diseases and chemical pathology on the Parkville site (1938).

After the war, the Division increased in size, and more laboratories and field stations were acquired. A regional laboratory was established at Armidale, New South Wales, in 1946; a cattle parasitology laboratory at Yeerongpilly, a Brisbane suburb, in 1947; a poultry breeding research centre at Werribee, Victoria, in 1948; a cattle breeding station
near Rockhampton, Queensland, in 1953; and a sheep biology laboratory at Prospect, New South Wales, in 1953.

In 1959, the animal research laboratories were divided into three separate divisions, named the Division of Animal Health, the Division of Animal Genetics, and the Division of Animal Physiology."