Seventy-Five Years at Willis Island
Preface
Foreword
Chapter 1: Willis Island Today
Chapter 2: Willis Island is Conceived
Chapter 3: Willis Island is Born
Chapter 4: The Early Years
Chapter 5: Life in the 1930s
Chapter 6: Willis Island at War (1941–42)
Chapter 7: After the War
Chapter 8: Willis Island—1960s Style
Chapter 9: The Value of Willis Island
Chapter 10: The Original Inhabitants
Appendix 1: Willis Island Milestones
Appendix 2: Willis Island Officers
Appendix 3: Log of Willis Island Observations, December 1922
Appendix 4: References
Index
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Preface
The establishment of a storm-warning wireless station on Willis Island was largely the result of the determination and persistence of a remarkable man—John King Davis. In 1921, Davis, Commonwealth Director of Navigation, was a member of a committee established by the Minister for Home and Territories (later Interior) to consider the establishment of the station. Other members of the committee were MacLaren, Secretary of the Department for Home and Territories, Hunt, the Commonwealth Meteorologist, and Malone, the Director of Radio Services, Postmaster-General's Department. The project was in danger of being shelved when Davis volunteered to man the station to demonstrate that there was no danger of the island being engulfed by high seas during a tropical cyclone.
Davis wrote the story of his manning of the island in his book Willis Island: a storm-warning station in the Coral Sea. However, his main claim to fame rests with his remarkable history as the captain of vessels involved in Antarctic exploration with the expeditions of Ernest Shackleton and Douglas Mawson. Among other remarkable exploits, he established a meteorological station at Macquarie Island.
In assembling the collection of reminiscences of Willis Island which appear in this issue of Metarch Papers, Peter Fletcher has made a valuable contribution to the history of Willis Island.
Peter was born in Kent, England, in 1943, educated at Grammar Schools at Dewsbury and High Wycombe and joined the UK Meteorological Office in 1962. He worked as an Assistant at RAF Bomber Command in High Wycombe, as Officer-in-Charge (meteorology) on weather ships in the North Atlantic for two years and later as a forecaster at RAF stations in the UK and the Middle East.
People in Bright Sparcs - Davis, John King; Fletcher, Peter; Gibbs, William James (Bill); Hunt, Henry Ambrose ; Mawson, Douglas
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© 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
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