Adrian Porter Pulls No Punches (continued)

Temporary installations have a habit of becoming permanent, especially in the Bureau where today's priority task can easily become an item on someone's five year plan. WF2 radars have haunted 'techs' for years, especially me. They have been the bane of my installation time. I installed the one at Learmonth. The one at Casey was a rush job at the end of one of my long, cold summers in Antarctica. We had a week or less to achieve the task which included pouring a concrete foundation. A blizzard came to spread the concrete heating banks over the district. The efforts of all achieved the desired result, only for me to pull it out some two years later. I was there to relocate the Mawson WF2 radar to Davis before it was decommissioned. The big one was moving the Bowes Avenue WF2 training radar twice before it was decommissioned (thankfully not by me), firstly to the Training School at Camp Road and then to the new training complex at Glenlitta Avenue, next paddock up.

I have travelled twice around Australia in the course of some projects. The first time was for the installation of the Sutron AWSs in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Peter Coe and I went the slow way because of the long airline pilot strike. We used every means of transport possible. AWS installations, now a stock pastime of Regional life, were once the domain of Installation Section. My former colleague, Bob Lazdins, spent a miserable week at Strahan calf deep in swamp water installing the old EG&G AWS. It rained all week and it was no drier in the hotel after work either. It was common for some divine providence to schedule installations over school holidays and to schedule southern ones in winter and northern ones in summer. I have lost a lot of skin through burns and been very thirsty at times. That was before concerns about the ozone layer were common knowledge; and before OH&S had added appropriate advisory notes affecting our mode of operations. Although we were always pleased to get away from 150 Lonsdale Street, we worked very hard and long. An installation's duration could be anywhere from three to six weeks. This time away, though, put a strain on our bodies and home life, and 150 Lonsdale Street started to look good at an installation's end.

Accidents from bites were common. Nasty insects were always lurking in the cable ducts. Ray Cox had his hand swell up from a centipede bite during the Cocos Island meteorological office installation. It stopped him talking for a day; then he became the talk of Cocos Island as everyone wanted to compare their bites. Accidents from equipment were relatively small. Terry Stiles' butchering of an artery in his own calf would have to be the acme of accidents, especially as it was performed by himself with his own pocket knife before breakfast during an installation in Brisbane. Terry passed a pre-Antarctic visit medical examination that same morning, with a boot full of blood.

Bureau of Meteorology