People in the Bureau

They were people of different ages, experience, academic qualifications and backgrounds.

Some had been with the Bureau from the time of World War I and many of those had seen active service in that war. Others had joined the Bureau in the 1920s or early 1930s. They had a wide variety of academic backgrounds and many had been clerks engaged in meteorological work of various kinds. Many realised that university qualifications would be needed to become professional meteorologists and acquired these qualifications by studying out of office hours. None of these people had formal classroom training in meteorology. They acquired their professional training by reading textbooks and learning from their fellows on the job.

All worked in the Central Office of the Bureau at 2 Drummond Street or in the Divisional Offices at Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart. They were in general somewhat formal people, as was the custom of that time, addressing their colleagues as Mister or Miss unless there was a personal friendship. Allan Cornish recalled that when Dan Hodge, the Chief Clerk, addressed the messenger boys, of which Tom Hall was one, he would call them Mr Hall, etc. The reminiscences of John Hogan (1896–1970) in Metarch Papers No 2 (1986), John Lillywhite in Metarch Papers No 4 (1992) and Allan Cornish in Metarch Papers No 8 (1996) also mention the formal atmosphere in the Bureau in the period 1914 to 1938. But this formality was a part of the accepted social behaviour of that time.

Among the staff in the post-war Bureau in 1946 were those in the first of two forecasters' training courses in 1937. Some had occupied positions of meteorological assistant in the Bureau and others had joined the Bureau to undertake the course. Some had university qualifications but many had not proceeded beyond secondary school.

Bureau of Meteorology