QUARTERLY FOCUS
1 October 2007

Introducing... Mike Bergin, Regional Director (Western Australia)

THE Bureau of Meteorology’s new Regional Director (Western Australia) took up the role on 6 August this year in his 37th year with the bureau, having worked in several capital-city offices, head office in Melbourne, and overseas.

Mike joined the bureau in 1971 as a cadet and completed the meteorology course in 1973. His career has been dynamic, to say the least, and this will be his ninth move with the bureau.

The well-respected and experienced journeyman says there is still a lot to be organised before the move west, having lived and worked in Brisbane for the past 16 years. Mike will be accompanied to Perth by his wife Lynne, while his son Marcus will be left to care for the family home in Brisbane.

Mike has been a weather forecaster and senior forecaster in the Darwin, Adelaide and Brisbane offices, as well as a forecasting policymaker at head office.

He worked as a forecaster at the Butterworth RAAF base in Malaysia from 1984-86, and on the Australian Monsoon Experiment in Darwin In 1987, providing weather forecasts to help plan experimental aircraft flights. But one of the highlights of his career was working with the Vanuatu meteorological service in the South Pacific from 1988-91.

“Vanuatu is a beautiful place, and the local people are extremely friendly,” Mike says. “I enjoyed recruiting and training local weather forecasters, and it has been very satisfying to see where they have gone with their careers and what they have achieved since I left Vanuatu.”

Mike says his specialty is tropical cyclone forecasting, and that managing warning operations during cyclones Larry and Monica last year was challenging and rewarding. Larry was the first category 4 cyclone to hit the east coast of Queensland for many decades, and Monica was the first severe cyclone to directly threaten Darwin since Tracy on Christmas Eve, 1974.

Mike is looking forward to the new role in Perth and coming to terms with bureau operations in Western Australia, but he has no firm plans as yet for the office.

“I’m a hands-on type of manager and intend meeting as many staff as possible, as soon as possible,” he says. “I see the Regional Director’s role as a facilitator; and assisting specialists to get jobs done through providing high-level support.”

- Gabrielle Forman, Public Affairs Group

Quarterly focus is updated on 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October.

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