Some of the material in the original publication was prepared in 1970 for an address I gave to the Joint Meteorological Colloquium of the Bureau of Meteorology, the CSIRO Division of Meteorological Physics and the Meteorological Department of the University of Melbourne. The assistance of John Hogan (1896–1970), former Assistant Director (Administration) of the Bureau, in preparing this material was, and is, acknowledged.

Meetings of the Meteorological Colloquia commenced in the 1950s to promote scientific discussion between meteorologists located in the Melbourne area. The colloquia were a focus for the formation of an Australian Branch of the Royal Meteorological Society which later became the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS).

Following my retirement from the Bureau in 1978 I suggested to Dr J. W. Zillman, Commonwealth Director of Meteorology, that the preservation of archival material relating to the history of meteorology in Australia needed greater care. From my own experience in the Bureau I was well aware that it was difficult to find the resources needed to assemble and preserve archival material, bearing in mind the magnitude of the effort required to maintain and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the national meteorological service.

Despite these difficulties, Dr Zillman established a project in the Bureau aimed at preserving material of historical significance. One result of this initiative was the publication of the series of Metarch Papers listed on the flyleaf of this publication. Metarch Papers No. 1, published in 1986, was a catalogue and index of items in Weather News, the house journal of the Bureau, publication of which commenced in 1956 and has continued at regular intervals to the present day. This publication, together with the Bureau's Annual Reports, provides a fruitful source of historical information.

Bureau of Meteorology