Weather Observers: outback characters in transition

Reg Shinkfield, South Australian Regional Office, 1938.

Reg Shinkfield of the South Australian Regional Office prepares to launch a pilot weather balloon and track it with a theodolite, probably from the tower of the Adelaide office on West Terrace, circa 1938.

TECHNOLOGY has transformed the working lives of the Bureau’s weather observers, part of the outback’s rich tapestry of characters.

In simpler technological times, early observers needed to become legends of trouble-shooting - whether it was to temporarily fix a cranky war-surplus radar while a cyclone loomed, mix hydrogen on the run, or remove a snake entwined around instruments without missing a single observation. One senior observer recalls being asked at his interview if he could set the gap on a distributor to keep a car engine firing.

Early observers practiced such arcane skills as the hundreds of flickering slide rule manipulations needed to calculate wind speed and direction during a soaring weather balloon’s 30-minute flight, after fastidiously tracking and recording the balloon’s ascent visually on a theodolite.

Computing and communications technologies and air-conditioning have eased the bureau of, for instance, a six-month posting to the tiny sand cay Willis Island in the Coral Sea with only radio contact with the main land. Now such remote stations have satellite communications, and many of the conveniences and luxuries of suburban life.

Computing and communications upgrades and automation have also transformed the job. Innovations like autosondes, which can release and track weather balloons automatically, or be remotely operated, are representative of the increased flexibility that the technological revolution has provided.

- Mike Rosel, Public Affairs Group

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

Weather Observers: outback characters in transition

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