Regional Director Queensland [Rex Falls]

Rex, aged 44, began his Bureau career as a cadet with the NSW Regional Office. After gaining a B.Sc degree from Sydney University in 1961 he was a member of the 1962 Meteorologist training course.

His first posting was to Adelaide Airport, followed a few months later by appointment to an A/Met 2 position at Darwin Airport.

The following year Rex was off to Malaysia as a Flight Lieutenant with the RAAF, carrying out forecasting duties at Butterworth air base. His two-year stint in SE Asia also included attendance at a 4-week course in tropical analysis and forecasting conducted by the US Air Force in the Philippines.

He says the dedication of his American instructors at the course developed his interest in tropical meteorology, and this was given further impetus when he returned to Darwin in 1967 and worked under the enthusiastic leadership of the then RD Bob Southern. The advances in recent years were probably largely due to Darwin's tropical analysis program dating from that time, he adds.

In 1970 he attended three international conferences—as a delegate to a WMO American Met. Society symposium on tropical meteorology in Honolulu; as Australian delegate to the Third Session of the ECAFE/WMO Typhoon Committee in Bangkok; and as a consultant to a WMO/UNDP seminar on synoptic meteorology in Asia and the SW Pacific, in Singapore.

After nearly 10 years in Darwin, Rex was promoted to Supervising Meteorologist in the Brisbane Regional Office in 1974. He was back in Darwin two years later and was promoted to Regional Director NT in September 1977.

Most of 1980 was spent on a 10-month attachment to the US National Hurricane Research Laboratory in Florida. A highlight of his stay was a flight through Hurricane Allen on a NOAA research aircraft.

During his US visit Rex was also an invited speaker at the International Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, and attended conferences organised by the American Met. Society in Denver and Miami.

Rex sees one of the major challenges in his new position being the modernisation of regional operations, to ensure that the new technology (such as AROS, McIDAS and the new observing systems) has a positive impact on services provided to the public and other users.

He is also very conscious of the fact that Queensland has not experienced a major cyclone since cyclone Althea 14 years ago, with the resulting tendency for the public to be apathetic and unaware of the dangers involved. To this end it was the Bureau's role to work with state emergency services and other authorities to promote public awareness of the threat posed by severe cyclones.

Rex's hobbies are tennis, sailing and fishing, and he and his wife Lynette have two children, Craig, 13, and Sally, 7.

Bureau of Meteorology