A Long and Fruitful Innings [John Lillywhite]

On Friday, July 26—37 years to the day since he first walked through the entrance of No.2 Drummond Street—John Lillywhite stepped down from the ADS post he has held since 1958 to begin six months' furlough. For John, who turned 60 on July 12, the exit heralds not so much the end of an era, as the beginning of a new-found freedom best exemplified by his planned journey to Europe with another Bureau old-timer, John 'Doc' Hogan.

Along with quite a swag of people who've made their mark in meteorology, the messrs Lillywhite and Hogan (formerly RD SA) trained together on the first met. assistants' course the Bureau ran back in August 1937. Now, they're reviving that partnership on August 1, when they leave Melbourne for London and a four-month exploration of Europe that will take them through Italy, Austria, the Rhine Valley and finally Spain. Then it's back to Australia via Hong Kong (with a quick visit to see Gordon Bell, head of the Royal Observatory there) before the ex-ADS returns to a small property in the Adelaide hills. If all goes well, he'll be touring again in 19475 with Jack V. Maher (SRIS), the first man John worked with in the Bureau and who now holds the longevity record at No. 2 Drummond with a June 1934 start.

Getting back to 1937 and his first year with the Bureau, John Lillywhite found himself in some fairly illustrious company. As a quiet 22-year-old science graduate fresh out of Adelaide University, he had answered a Bureau advertisement for a met. assistants training course. Of the 150 applications, 14 got the nod in what was the first mass intake of science graduates as the Bureau geared up for the meteorological needs of the infant aviation industry, Its far-sighted assistant-director technical, Henry Barkly, who died in 1938, was the architect of the Bureau's aviation met. service that now provides 750,000 forecasts a year.

On the course with John were the afore-mentioned Doc Hogan; Keith Hannay (now RD Vic); Neil McRae (ex-ADR); Alan Martin (recently retired as Supervising Met, RO WA); Errol Mizon (STOI); Max Moss; Harry Newell (who went into teaching); Dr Pat Squires (now at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada); Dr Fred Rose (now professor of anthropology at Leipzig University in East Germany); Jarvis Glasscock, who joined the RAAF at the end of the course; the late Joe Walpole, Percy Dale and L. J. Dwyer, who was Bureau Director from 1955 until his death in 1962; and two RAAF men taking met. training. One was named Reeve and the other was Pilot Officer Dick Kingsland, who eventually served as permanent head of the Department of Interior from 1963–70.

Bureau of Meteorology