Norm entered the Victorian School of Forestry at sixteen years of age in 1938. After graduation his first posting from 1941 to 1946 was to Bruthen where in the last six months he was acting District Forester as the former DFO – Needham - had resigned to go to Tasmania. Norm then accepted a Forests Commission place in Melbourne University where he completed his Bachelor of Science in Forestry in 1948.

Posted to Tallangatta (Upper Murray District) as District Forester in 1948, replacing Bob Marshall, Norm concentrated on establishing the primary roads for fire and logging access as well as dealing with influence on the Commission of the sawmilling identity at Corryong, Julia Hale. Norm believes that a possible mistake of his in determining road classifications to Hale’s logging area for the then new Royalty Equation System prompted Hale, in 1961, to take the Commission to court. Tom Chettle, then studying law under a Commission scholarship, conducted the case for the Commission; but the Commission lost.

Norm next posting as DFO was to Daylesford in 1953, then to Ballarat in 1959 where he became increasingly disenchanted with the Commission and resigned in 1960 to take up the position of Chief Forester with the State Electricity Commission. That job was also uninteresting and was primarily concerned with providing feedback to the Forests Commission over the dispute between the two departments over occupancy of the land around the Rubicon hydro works.

Our records show that Norm then joined the Department of Forests in Lae in Papua New Guinea and undertook consultancies for the United Nations Development Programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in the Philippines and elsewhere.