N. W. Jolly Medal

The N.W. Jolly Medal is the Institute of Foresters of Australia’s highest and most prestigious honour for outstanding service to the profession of forestry in Australia. 

It recognises contributions from across the full scope of forestry and reflecting the diversity of significant contributions being made across a wide range of disciplines and forest management activities. In this context, forestry includes the sustainable management, development and use of forests for the diversity of goods and services that forest ecosystems provide, whether for public, private or commercial purposes, including education, research and development, forest policy and all types of forest land management.

The Award is named in honour of Norman William Jolly (1882-1954) Who made an outstanding contribution to development of professional forestry in Australia in the first half of the 20th Century.

The Award is made by the Board of the Institute on the recommendation of the Jolly Award Committee, which is made up of three Institute members and previous Jolly Medal recipients.

N.W. Jolly Medal Recipients

N.W. Jolly Charter & Rules 

Who was Norman W. Jolly?

Norman William Jolly, 1924 Jolly was dux of Prince Alfred College in Adelaide and went on to study science at the University of Adelaide (B.Sc. 1901). In 1904, he was awarded South Australia’s first Rhodes Scholarship to study at the Balliol College, Oxford and graduated with a first in natural science (1907). He then chose to study forestry under Sir William Schlick at the Oxford Forestry School, which was then training foresters for service in the British colonies and Britain.

He graduated with an Oxford Diploma of Forestry and served with the Indian Forest Service in Burma in 1908--‐09 before returning to Australia in 1909.
After a brief stint teaching at the Geelong Church of Grammar School, Adelaide, he was appointed as an instructor in forestry at Adelaide University, the first university forestry course in Australia, and as Assistant Conservator with the Woods and Forests Department of South Australia.

Shortly after his marriage in 1911, he was appointed Director of Forests in the Queensland Lands Department. He energetically pursued the implementation and improvement of Forestry legislation; control of timber harvesting; establishment of national parks, hoop and bunya pine plantations; and regeneration of red cedar stands. Friction with his Lands Department superior caused him to resign in 1918.

He then took up the position of Forestry Commissioner in a Commission of three under Chief Commissioner Dalrymple--Hay in New South Wales, where he embarked on similarly ambitious and necessary changes. At the conclusion of his seven-year term in 1925, he returned to Adelaide and again worked as a consultant to the Woods and Forests Department and as Professor of Forestry at Adelaide University. In 1926 he returned to New South Wales, this time as the sole Forestry Commissioner and, with characteristic vigor, greatly strengthened the staff of the Forestry Commission, established a research branch dealing with silviculture and wood properties, and markedly expanded the radiata pine plantations. He retired in 1933 with impaired health after continual conflicts over  government policy.

From 1933 to 1939, he undertook consultancy work for New Zealand Perpetual Forests Pty Ltd in New Zealand. From 1940 to 1954, he was appointed to the Forestry Board in South Australia and again as a consultant to the Woods and Forests Department, where he and a small group of professional foresters further developed and implemented a planning framework that has endured and been widely applied elsewhere. He died in 1954.

Jolly was an exceptional professional forester and was an outstanding contributor to forestry throughout Australia.

For more information on Norman Jolly