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Table of Contents

Memories of the Bureau of Meteorology

Preface

Memories of the Bureau of Meteorology 1929–1946 by Allan Cornish
Foreword
Chapter 1: My Early Days in the Bureau
Chapter 2: Some New Vistas
Chapter 3: The RAAF Measures Upper Air Temperatures
Chapter 4: The Bureau Begins to Grow
Chapter 5: My Voyage in Discovery II
Chapter 6: The Birth of the Instrument Section
Chapter 7: Darwin Days
Chapter 8: I Leave the Bureau

History of Major Meteorological Installation in Australia from 1945 to 1981 by Reg Stout

Four Years in the RAAF Meteorological Service by Keith Swan

The Bureau of Meteorology in Papua New Guinea in the 1950s by Col Glendinning


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Chapter 5: My Voyage in Discovery II (continued)

The number one was a Lieutenant Commander and there were four deck officers and then the bosun. The chief engineer was a Commander and there were second and third engineers. The ward room had about 20 in all.

The engine room crew and the bosun were retired Royal Navy and in the Reserve, and had volunteered for these jobs. They were superb seamen. They were good.

The ship had an economical cruise of about 10 or 11 knots and a maximum of about 15 to 16. It had a steel, heavily reinforced ice-breaking stem that went from the bow back along the keel for about a third of the length of the ship.

Water and fuel were pumped aft to raise the bow slightly out of the water for ice-breaking. The ship could cut leads in pack ice about eight feet thick.

Pack ice

Evening in the pack ice in the Ross Sea.

The technique was to bump the edge of thick pack-ice at about two or three knots and keep bumping and bumping until a 'beach' was cut about 15 feet long. Discovery II was then put astern until clear of the pack and then driven onto the 'beach' at about 10 knots. It would climb up the slope and eventually drop through the ice, opening up a crack for sometimes a mile ahead. The ship was nosed into the lead to widen it. It was a noisy, uncomfortable business.

We left Perth about the middle of December 1937 proceeding due south until we arrived off Adelie Land. We nosed slowly eastward along the coast and then entered Commonwealth Bay which Mawson had called the home of the blizzard. A katabatic wind of about 80 knots is persistent in that area.

Some distance offshore in that region there is a relatively shallow area above a ridge on the continental shelf on which icebergs run aground. We counted 18 icebergs in that area and were told that some of them may have been there for 50 years.

One iceberg we encountered in that area was 22.5 miles (36 km) in length. That was the largest sighted during the voyage. They were majestic, about 150 feet above the waterline. They often moved steadily upwind, their motion being determined by the sub-surface ocean current.

Large iceberg

Large iceberg from a distance of three miles.


Organisations in Australian Science at Work - Frosterley Club

People in Bright Sparcs - Cornish, Allan William; Mawson, Douglas

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Cornish, A., Stout, R., Swan, K and Glendinning, C. 1996 'Memories of the Bureau of Meteorology', Metarch Papers, No. 8 February 1996, Bureau of Meteorology

© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
Published by Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, using the Web Academic Resource Publisher
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