Mr Treloar was the principal lecturer in our training course and in whose room I sat from the second week I was there up until the course which began in September. Among his other idiosyncrasies he was a compulsive eater. Sheltering behind pigeon holes on his desk he would begin eating about 10 am. I didn't see very much of Mr Timcke during the time I was on the course. Mr Mackey who worked in Mr Timcke's room and was aged about thirty, had been retrenched from the Australian Navy at the time of the economic depression and had been in the Bureau four or five years. He was due to go to Darwin after three or four weeks leave, taking with him his young wife and infant daughter. In Darwin he was to relieve W. A. Dwyer who had completed his three years tropical service. Mackey was a mine of information on matters pertaining to the Bureau and informed me that he would be the Commonwealth Meteorologist after Mr Barkley, but he did point out that he had a rival in Mr Cornish who was about five years younger. Alan Cornish was then about 25 and George Mackey believed they would be rival candidates for the position of Commonwealth Meteorologist. Cornish, a pleasant man, was to be a lecturer on our course, and was to replace George Mackey temporarily in the Aviation room. Mr Hogan, (one of two bearing the name John Hogan), occupying the second desk in Mr Treloar's room, was at that time away for a few days delivering a barometer to Hamilton, which was a stop on the air-route from Melbourne to Adelaide. The aircraft on that air route, DH86's, flew from Melbourne via Hamilton and Narracoorte to Adelaide. John Hogan was returning in an Airspeed Oxford owned by a fledgling company called Ansett Airways. This John Hogan was a very pleasant man and among others things, was a member of the daily forecast board which used to foregather in the weather room.

Bureau of Meteorology