Wragge, a much younger man, had emigrated to Australia only four years previously. He had made a name for himself among British meteorologists by establishing a meteorological station on Britain's highest mountain, Ben Nevis, and climbing up every day for five months in the most arduous conditions during the winter of 1881-2 to take observations. In Australia. Wragge settled initially in Adelaide where he established a private meteorological observatory at his home and another at the top of Mount Lofty. He also founded his own society—named, somewhat pretentiously, the Meteorological Society of Australasia— and claimed an authoritative role as a meteorologist in the city where Charles Todd had long been the leading authority. An ardent and effective self-publicist. Wragge was commissioned by the Queensland government in 1885 to report on that colony's rudimentary meteorological service. A year later he was appointed Queensland's Government Meteorologist, and immediately set about reorganizing and extending the colony's network of observing stations.

Bureau of Meteorology