of the General Staff should be appointed in place of Chief of Intelligence and that a General Staff be established. The Minister, who was a licensed surveyor, was unimpressed by the advice preferring to continue for the time being with the arrangements of a Military Board. He was concerned that there were no plans for mobilisation, or local defence, noting that "there were few reliable maps, even of the most important localities". These were the important national defence issues that Ewing recommended to Bridges for his immediate attention. The Department of Defence and the Government considered a number of options to address the important and urgent need for a military survey, finally deciding in late 1907 to raise the Australian Intelligence Corps (AIC) manned by part-time Citizen Military Force (CMF) officers who were trained in surveying or draughting and whose duties included the preparation of strategic and tactical maps and plans. In Victoria the military survey was the responsibility of Lieutenant-Colonel John Monash who was then the senior AIC militia officer in the 3rd Military District. By 1909 the limitations of this arrangement were evident, and after advice from a senior British Army Royal Engineer Survey Officer, it was decided to embark on a systematic military survey conducted full-time by a Survey Section, Royal Australian Engineers (RAE) (Permanent Forces), allotted for duty under the supervision of the AIC. The Section was to be commanded by an Australian survey officer and staffed by Australian warrant officer draughtsmen and non-commissioned officers (NCO) topographers and four NCO topographers on an initial two-year loan from the British Army Royal Engineers. The Royal Engineer topographers (Corporal Lynch, Lance-Corporals Barrett, Davies and Wilcox) arrived in Melbourne on 11 April 1910 and on 16 April 1910, draughtsman Warrant Officer John J Raisbeck was the first Australian appointed to the Survey Section and soon after he was joined by draughtsman Warrant Officer Class 1 George Constable. Raisbeck was a survey draughtsman from the Department of Mines, Bendigo, and a Second-Lieutenant in the CMF 9th Light Horse Regiment. He relinquished his commission to enlist in the Permanent Military Forces. He was granted the Honorary rank Second-Lieutenant and was retired with the rank Lieutenant-Colonel 33 years later at age 63 years having served in France in World War I and in World War II. Fitzgerald said that JJ Raisbeck was the 'pioneer of military mapping in Australia'. The first officer