Forecasters' Training Course (continued)

Fritz Loewe was the odd man among our lecturers. He had an immense teutonic dignity and sternness. His command of English was not good and we found his speech quaint. He had won an Iron Cross in the German Army in World War I. Between wars he had accompanied the German scientist Wegener in crossing the Greenland icecap. Wegener died on that expedition but Loewe survived with the loss of some of his toes by frostbite. This left him with an unusual gait in that he had to lean inwards when turning corners. He left his homeland for Australia in the 1930s because the Nazi regime made things difficult for people like Fritz, who was Jewish. He was basically a geographer and I felt an academic affinity with him.

His lectures often involved the blackboard presentation of detailed tables of meteorological data which could be somewhat boring. We students sometimes contrived to find a link between the material in the tables and the Arctic. We found that an appropriate question would relieve the tedium by stimulating Fritz to reminisce about his Greenland experiences.

Fritz had the disconcerting habit of interrupting his lectures by firing random geographical questions at us such as 'What is the latitude of Melbourne?'. Usually his questions revealed our ignorance of geography.

Bureau of Meteorology