Some Snippets from Noel Barrett (continued)

In January 1965 I received a telegram while on leave in Hobart to report to the Training School on 1 February 1965 for some WF2 radar training prior to starting at Giles in February 1965 vice Bob West. Further training was provided by WRE, en route, on their radio gear. Giles was at that time halfway up the Woomera Rocket Range and Blue Streak rockets were still being fired. At least one landed not far from Giles; although the search parties always had trouble finding all the bits. While at Giles we had many interesting visitors including bird expeditions lead by Vincent Seventy and, of course, Len Beadell of Gun Barrel Highway fame. At Giles if you wanted to play cricket and the pitch wasn't too good you just fired up the Caterpillar grader and graded one. Had a great fridge in the mess with two evaporators; when the Bristol Freighter arrived each month from Woomera via Maralinga with supplies, the beer was always unloaded first and a carton or so placed in the fridge. The aim was then to quickly unload the rest of the aircraft so that the beer was nicely chilled when finished; if you took too long it was frozen. I left Giles in September 1965 for Melbourne, some leave in Hobart and more pre-Antarctic training.

In January 1966 I again threw my razor into the Yarra River and sailed on the Thala Dan for Wilkes, having once again followed up my permanency. By this time I was engaged to be married on my return and getting serious about staying in the Bureau. The trip down was relatively uneventful apart from getting stuck in the ice and the Pernot at Dumont d'Urville. At Wilkes we had US Weather Service 1680 MHz GMD auto tracking radio theodolite. While not having the refined mechanical precision of the AA3 Mk VII radar it worked very well even though it sounded very much like a Melbourne tram when the antenna slewed. Highlights of Wilkes were two field trips, one with dogs to the Vanderford Glacier where we were stuck in a tent in a blizzard on the Antarctic Circle for three or four days and travelled back across sea ice that was breaking up. But that was better than going across heavily crevassed country. The other was to S2 by D4 tractor. Wilkes was a very comfortable and happy station and we took much pride in trying to release radiosonde balloons in very high winds; we would always have three goes before giving up and then only to preserve gas. The delight of the place was the Baker HydroNeal hydrogen generator which broke down ammonia into nitrogen and hydrogen to fill the balloon. Much better than messy caustic and ferro silicon, however, it had its problems if not used as per instructions. While at Wilkes some time was spent building what is now the first Casey station.

Bureau of Meteorology