George Grant Bond
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Conclusion
Register of Marks
Bibliography
References
Index
Search
Help
Contact us
Perhaps the Courier Mail's whimsical article on November 1933 had said it all. Headed—'Natures' Vagaries—It Never Rains but it Pours' it went on: 'Out in the country the farmer prays for a few inches of rain to refresh his crops, and Nature, ever so contrary, pulls the chain, but doesn't let go until the farmers' crops are flooded and his cattle well nigh drowned. Is it any wonder that the Australian farmer is frequently depicted as an angry bewhiskered individual, cursing the weather. Is it any wonder also, that the hair of Mr G. G. Bond, the Queensland Government Meteorologist, is streaked with silver, and that Mr Inigo Jones of sunspot fame, wears a perpetual frown. Mr Jones talks Solomon wise about his beloved sunspots being obscured by nimbus, and Mr Bond, equally learned, excused Nature's current vagaries in scientific terms of air currents from the tropics, playing leap-frog with others hell bound from the Antarctic. Which, boiled down, means that Nature does pretty well what she likes, as witness the week just closed'.
So in October 1934, came the day when George Bond gladly laid down his purple ink pen for the last time in the little office at the end of the Weather Bureau verandah. He was weary and broken in health, but there must have been some satisfaction in the knowledge that he had given faithful service and capable leadership over the long years of the Weather Bureau's growth, not much alas in staff numbers—five in 1911 and seven in 1934—but greatly in services required and supplied, and in importance in the eyes of the public.
He requested that there should be no presentation, no farewell speeches. He wanted to slip quietly away without any fuss, and the only indication that Queensland was to have a new weatherman, was a small photo and column in the Courier Mail, announcing his retirement.
People in Bright Sparcs - Bond, George Grant; Jones, Inigo Owen
 |
Bureau of Meteorology |  |
© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
Published by Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, using the Web Academic Resource Publisher
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/fam/0162.html