Pre-war Services for Civil Aviation (continued)

Walter and George both had wives and families who found it difficult to adapt to their primitive houses. George reported that his house had no reticulated water or electricity. Walter, as resident meteorologist in Darwin in these early days of aviation, met such aviation notables as Ulm, Kingsford Smith, Amy Johnson, Amelia Earhart, Jim Broadbent, Jim Melrose and James Mollison.

Forecasts for the DH86s for the flight from Brisbane to Darwin, which entailed many stops at intermediate landing grounds, were presumably provided by the staff of the Brisbane Divisional Office of the Bureau and, like those provided by other Divisional Offices were neither detailed, timely or particularly suited to aircraft requirements.

The MacRobertson air race of October 1934 provided a further stimulus for aviation in Australia. Sir MacPherson Robertson gave 10 000 pounds prize money for an air race from England to Australia to commemorate the centenary of the establishment of the city of Melbourne. There were two sections of the race, speed and handicap. The first of 12 finishers was a DH88 Comet, a twin-engined low-wing monoplane piloted by Scott and Black, which overflew Flemington racecourse in Melbourne on 23 October 1934 after an elapsed time from London of 70 hr 45 min. Second was a KLM DC2 aircraft, flown by Parmentier and Moll, carrying a load of passengers. Its elapsed time was 90 hours 14 minutes. Compare these times with the 12 to 14 days of the Qantas/Imperial Airways service of that time.

Timely forecasts, specifically tailored for aviation, did not become available until late 1937, by which time two formal training courses of weather officers had been conducted. Trainees on the first course were mainly meteorological assistants with experience in the Bureau's Divisional Offices, while most of the students in the second course were new recruits with university degrees in science with majors in mathematics and physics.

Bureau of Meteorology