Temperate East Coast Forecasting, February 1945-January 1946

After several weeks of leave, before I had used up all of my accumulation, I was posted to No 14 OBU Detachment A. I was dumbfounded on receiving the telegram, imagining that I must be going back to the tropics, but No 14 OBU was at Lowood in the Brisbane Valley, and its Detachment A was at Charleville. There I spent about two months, relieving each of the forecasters for three weeks. That was the practice in our sections, because it was possible only for a professional forecaster to relieve. The airport was extensive, as in 1943 it had accommodated many American bombers which flew to Northern Queensland airstrips before performing strikes in the New Guinea area and then returning to base. By my time there were only about 35 of us, mostly meteorological personnel with a few support staff. It was a busy office just for weather observation, and we had very sophisticated equipment, including radiosonde facilities. There were also many aircraft movements from Brisbane and Sydney to Darwin, as well as the invaluable Flying Doctor Service. There were American, Dutch and Australian aircraft, both service and civil, and their main concerns were the incidence of local fog in the early morning at Charleville, and the height at which the wind changed. During the April-October season it was possible in that region to fly to Darwin and back with a following wind, because at about 10 000 feet the direction changed from south-east to something between west and north-west. The readings from our pilot balloon flights invariably indicated the critical level, but otherwise in that season the weather was fine and clear, except that the serious drought conditions of 1944–45 sometimes whipped up serious dust storms which penetrated well into Queensland. I well remember one day a Dutch pilot of a B-25 returning to Charleville from near Longreach because the visibility by his definition was 'pisspa'.

Bureau of Meteorology