After a year on the island with the other two residents, AWA radio operators Paddy Whelan and Chris O'Leary, I returned to Hobart to become a Met. Assistant (Observer) in the RAAF Met. Service "for the duration"

My wartime service took me from Hobart to East Sale and Bairnsdale in Victoria; Gorrie (NT), Lae, Madang and Emirau Island. The period at Lae and Emirau Island was as a member of No. 6 Mobile Met. Flight (OIC Joe Lord) attached to General Blamey's first Australian Army headquarters at Lae.

Hobart Postwar

Following the end of the war I resumed at the Hobart Bureau as a civilian observer after discharge from the RAAF as a Warrant Officer in May 1946.

I crossed Bass Strait once again to complete post-war no. 2 Weather Officer course in 1948, then returned to Hobart Regional Office as an Aviation and P.W. forecaster until 1951, when I joined with W. N. (Bill) Dwyer to staff the Avmet office at Cambridge. Five years later, in 1956, a new airport was opened at nearby Llanherne and the Met. office was relocated to its present site. There I remained, except for several trips to the north of the island relieve at Launceston airport—then managed by OIC Jack Costello.

Well known Bureau identities who occupied the position of R/D Tas during the years from 1936 to 1959 (when I left Tasmania) included J. C. Foley, A. C. Combes, G. W. Mackey, J. Lillywhite, H. E. Banfield, V. J. Bahr, A. J. Shields and J. Johnson.

Port Moresby 1959–63

I left Hobart in October 1959 for Port Moresby with my wife and three daughters and spent the next four years there, except for a six week spell at Lae to relieve OIC A. W. Douglas. My two elder daughters were among the first pupils of the newly established High School, whilst the youngest, not satisfied with the curriculum of her primary school, prevailed on local school friends to teach her to speak the Motu dialect.

The four years passed pleasantly with well known identities such as Terry Lawrence, Ken Bott, Len Lloyd and Bob Baird. under successive OICS A. V. Gotley, S. W. S. Robertson. J. A. Sandown and A. J. Walker.

Bureau of Meteorology