Bill Smith Bows Out—47 Year Record

I began my public service career in 1934 at the tender age of 14 years as a PMG telegraph messenger in Hobart and joined the Bureau two years later as an Assistant (Met. Branch). In those days the Bureau's total staff numbered less than 100, and the Hobart office employed only five under the Divisional Meteorologist J. C. Foley.

Early Days

The Hobart Bureau functioned in two rooms, part of the Div. Met's residence. The building, located within Anglesea Army Barracks, had been handed over to the state as an observatory in 1881. Bulletins and forecasts were copied on Gelatine trays, using hectograph ink and ribbons, and were delivered by bicycle to the sole radio station 7ZL and exhibited at the GPO, a local park and some 15 suburban railway stations.

Around 1938, the first teleprinters were introduced; an early Halliwell-Dines pressure plate anemometer was replaced by the now familiar Dines D.R. pressure tube anemometer and the Australian word code finally gave way to the international figure code—to the dismay of PMG telegraphists who thereafter were unable to decode the weather telegrams.

The period immediately prior to the outbreak of war in 1939 also saw the formation of the Aviation Meteorological Service and staffing of Airport Met. Offices, although in Hobart this did not occur on a full time basis until 1951. Prior to that, staff travelled from the Bureau by taxi and river ferry to Cambridge Airport to service individual arrivals and departures.

Early in 1941 I volunteered for service as an observer on Willis Island, and arrangements for my enlistment in the newly formed RAAF Meteorological Service were cancelled to allow my transfer to the island as a civilian. I celebrated my 21st birthday on Willis in July of that year and, the following year, the 21st anniversary of the establishment of Willis as a Met. and radio station in 1921.

Bureau of Meteorology