COUR EARLY WEATHERMEN

Survival on the roof of mainland Australia was an unenviable but necessary challenge that tested the endurance skills of 19thcentury weather forecasters.

- MATTHEW HIGGINS

THE SPLENDIDLY NAMED Basil de Burgh Newth was part of a small group of mainly young men who, at the end of the 19th century, lived year-round on mainland Australia’s highest point – Mt Kosciuszko, in New South Wales, where a weather station had been established by colourful meteorologist Clement Wragge. From 1897 to 1902 the group sent regular weather records to Wragge and the experience remained with Newth for life – he spent 27 months at the top of Australia, but was still writing about it 50 years later, saying he was “well repaid in interest, experience and adventure… One could write a book about it all.” Born in England, Wragge was dynamic and unconventional and, in 1881, he established a weather observatory on Britain’s highest peak, Ben Nevis, on behalf of the Scottish Meteorological Society. He also established a comparative sea-level station at Fort William nearby. The principle of this work was that forecasts could be aided by making and comparing ‘upper’ atmosphere studies (through simultaneous readings of instruments) with the findings of the sea-level station. British scientists welcomed the results and Wragge was awarded a gold medal by the Society.

Wragge then came to Australia and, in 1887, he became Queensland’s Government Meteorologist, establishing a network of weather stations and publishing Australia-wide forecasts. He furthered the study of tropical cyclones and began the practice of naming them, as we do today.

Wragge wasn’t a typical Victorian-era man. Vegetarian, interested in eastern religions, with green environmental views, he stood out from a 19th-century crowd. This lack of orthodoxy, plus his outspokenness and lack of tact, often put him at odds with his intercolonial peers.