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August 13, 2017 / Leave a comment

Extract – Bald Knob Weather

July 21, 2017

Extract from Bald Knob – A Familiar Landscape

Weather

The 1893 flood was the result of the heaviest rainfall experienced in the district and in south east Queensland when 35.71 inches fell at Crohamhurst in 24 hours. This was recorded by Inigo Jones and was Australia’s highest rainfall within a 24 hour period. The total rainfall in the episode amounted to 78 inches, resulting in the great 1893 flood in Brisbane. Rain on Bald Knob flows down London Creek to the Stanley River and Somerset Dam. Bald Knob rainfall is thus a very important source of water for Brisbane. Heavy rainfall on the plateau and ranges can cause flooding in the Stanley, Brisbane, Mooloolah, Maroochy and Mary Rivers.

In Harden (1939), the meteorologist Inigo Jones described the comparative rainfall records.

“At Esk on the Brisbane River the average annual rainfall is just under forty inches, and at Kilcoy is just over forty. At Woodford it has risen at the rate of an inch a mile to fifty-two. At Peachester it is nearly 68, having risen two inches per mile and at Crohamhurst it is just on seventy six, rising from Peachester nearly three inches per mile. At Bald Knob, two miles distant, the average is now ninety inches which is a rise of seven inches per mile and this average is only for the last 10 years which was a notably dry period. In the wettest year, 1931, Crohamhurst recorded 98 inches and Bald Knob 114 inches.”

If Bald Knob had a weather recording station in 1893 it may now hold the record for the highest rainfall ever recorded over 24 hours in south east Queensland. A weather forecaster from the Commonwealth Meteorological Bureau confirmed that Bald Knob would have had at least as high a rainfall on that date as Crohamhurst and more than the recordings of nearby stations, Mooloolah and Landsborough.

The average annual rainfall recorded at the Bald Knob weather recording station is 2034.7mm (80.11 inches). The highest annual rainfall was 3837.4mm (151.07 inches) and the lowest was 784.8mm (30.89 inches). The only areas in the south east of Queensland which receive higher average annual rainfall are the mountainous areas near the New South Wales border, Springbrook’s annual average is a little over 3000mm.

Educational Pioneer

July 21, 2017

Early Settlers

July 21, 2017

The early settlers had a hard life with hot summers and long hours. There were venomous snakes, scrub ticks, leeches, mosquitoes and insects of all description to contend with,

There were, however, several compensations

You worked at your own pace and not likely to have stomach ulcers or hypertension Opportunity to observe nature first hand giving a wonderful feeling of freedom.

You were part of the real world The air was fresh and clean

The only pollution was the delightful fragrance of the smoke of eucalypt leaves and twigs of a bill fire

You were insulated from the day to day basis of corporate marketing, greed for money and the insincerity and hypocrisy of politics.

AND you didn’t use heavy chains and big tractors to clear scrub leaving barren land behind.

The trees that were felled were for the settler’s own use

Most important of all was the trust and fellowship that developed with other settlers.

Pair of old spurs (Patrick Stacey)

July 21, 2017

Pair of Old Spurs. Hanging on a wall in Landsborough museum is a pair of old spurs. The leather straps are eaten with age, yet the rowels (wheel with spikes) are sharp and vicious as ever. Looking at these spurs one wonders what stories they could tell. To me it conjures up a picture in my mind of horsemen riding through trackless bush and ending up around a campfire at nightfall. Many a campfire yam would be told and repeated in one form or another many times. One such story goes something like this:-

“There was this flash bloke who set out from Brisbane to ride through the bush to Maryborough. He rode with a mate. Anyway, they made good progress. Weather was hot. About the third day, getting near Maryborough and coming sundown, they came to a clear creek and decided to dismount for a drink. They were bending over having a drink, when the bloke jerked up suddenly and yelled ‘I’ve been bit by a snake!’

‘Where did it bite you?’ – Asks his mate.

‘On my backside!’

He dropped his pants, and sure enough, there were two bleeding punctures.

‘Hells Bells’ his mate said, ‘I can’t tie it there – and I certainly don’t want to suck it. I’ll just have to cut it and let it bleed’

So he nicked it with his knife. They got on their horses and rode as fast as they could through the bush. As darkness fell they came across a drover’s campfire. The bloke was still all right – a bit sore, but all right. They made him strong black tea with plenty of sugar and told him to walk around the camp fire all night. Don’t go to sleep or you will die.

Not much good everyone staying awake, so they rolled into their swags, while he walked around the fire. Must have been the right treatment, for he was all right in the morning. Though he was pretty tired. Anyway, he recovered.

About a week later, they were riding back to Brisbane, and they came to the same clear stream. They decided to have a drink.

They were both bending over scooping up water with their hands when the flash bloke yelled ‘I’ve been bit again!’

And so he had.

The silly bugger had sat down on the wheel of his goose-necked spur!”

Clement Wragge

June 26, 2017

Clement Wragge -Meteorologist

Our Maleny weather records go back to 1885 partly due to the foresight of Clement Wragge. Clement Wragge  was Queensland’s first government meteorologist had the foresight to set up a rain recording station at Maleny and we now have over 120 years of accurate records.

Clement Lindsay Wragge was truly an extraordinary person. He was tall, lean and restless with a mop of red hair and bounding energy. Born in England in 1852 and son of a solicitor he trained in law. His love of natural science proved too much and he ran away to sea where he learned, navigation, astronomy and meteorology.

Clement Wragge then joined the Royal Meteorological Society and was given the task of setting up a weather stations at Fort William and on top of Ben Nevis – Britain’s tallest mountain

Arriving in Australia to take up his appointment as Government Meteorologist of Queensland on 1st January 1887 it rained incessantly for several weeks resulting in him receiving his nickname of “inclement” Wragge.

Wragge’s rise to fame was that in an incredibly short space of time he had established 400 rain recording stations, including Maleny, and 100 synoptic weather stations, including Crohamhurst Observatory, near Peachester. It was here under the guidance of his pupil and assistant, Inigo Jones, the observatory was to become a world famous centre for long range forecasting using a European technique of 30 year cycles that Wragge had learned about at one of the International Meteorological Conferences he had attended in Munich and Paris and later improved upon by Inigo Jones.

Another first for Wragge was naming of tropical cyclones, using the Greek alphabet, progressing through Greek and Roman mythology and finally to names of politicians of the day, on the grounds that both were ‘national disasters’. The system of naming of cyclones lapsed for many years but was resumed by the BOM in 1963.

Wragge thought he could break droughts by firing Steiger Canons at rain bearing clouds. He set up a ring of canons around Charleville and fired them all at the same time to create a tremor in the atmosphere. The experiment was a failure. One of the Steiger canons is still place and can be seen at Charleville, Queensland.

Inigo Jones

June 18, 2017

 

 

 

Inigo Owen Jones (1 December 1872 – 14 November 1954) was a meteorologist and farmer in Queensland, Australia.

Early life

Inigo Owen Jones was born in Croydon, Surrey, England to Owen Jones a civil engineer and a descendant of the architect Inigo Jones. His mother was from the Bernoulli family of mathematicians, and Inigo attributed his interest in meteorology and astronomy to this background. Upon his death, his cousin, Archibald Bernoulli of Melbourne, a direct descendent of the Bernoulli family, placed a notice in The Argus newspaper in Melbourne.

In 1874 Jones’s parents migrated to Australia, settling on a property called Crohamhurst in the Glass House Mountains north of Brisbane in eastern Queensland. He became interested in meteorology while working on the family farm.

He was for many years a synodsman of the Brisbane diocese of the Church of England.

Meteorology 

The Queensland Government meteorologist Clement Lindley Wragge was so impressed with Inigo’s ability as a schoolboy that he recruited him as an assistant in 1888.

Jones studied the variation in sunspot cycles that had been discovered by Eduard Bruckner, and came to the conclusion that anomalies were caused by the interaction of the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. This became the basis of his long-range weather forecasts, although he never claimed to be able to make day-to-day predictions. Although Jones failed to have his methods recognised as soundly based, by any substantial body of accredited scientific opinion he was widely recognised for his successes, especially by farmers.

Inigo Jones became a full-time forecaster and lecturer in 1927 and founded the privately operated Crohamhurst Observatory in south-east Queensland. An Australian Senate hearing was told in 1938 that Jones was a “wonderful patriot” and that he was “held in the highest esteem by the big man and also the small man on the land”.

At 11 January 1939 meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) his ideas on cyclical variations theory was severely discredited, especially by Edward Kidson, the New Zealand government meteorologist, and yet farmers credited and worked their farms using his long-range forecasts.

Later life

 Jones died at home on his farm at Crohamhurst, Queensland.

Legacy 

His assistant Lennox Walker expanded Jones’ theories and continued marketing long range forecasts until 2000, when he passed the business over to his own son Hayden Walker.

His Crohamhurst Observatory was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register in 2008.

Big Flood 1893

June 18, 2017

 

The highest February rainfall ever recorded at Maleny was in 1893 with 2733 mm, or over 109 inches, well in excess of the average annual rainfall.  In three days over 1715 mm of rainfall was recorded at Mooloolah On the 3rd the highest 24 hours rainfall in Queensland was recorded at Crohamhurst with 907 mm. It is said the Obi-Obi Creek rose to an enormous height, reaching a point in Maple Street above Coral Street, which would have been submerged.

It was during this tropical storm that Steamer SS Dicky was shipwrecked on a Caloundra beach, Dicky Beach to be named after her. The ship sailed from Rockhampton and as it arrived to clear Caloundra Head it met lashing rain and cyclonic winds that sent the ship on her beam ends.  Captain James Beattie was force to beach the ship to avoid hitting the rocks off Moffat Beach. On 4th February 1893 at 10.35 am the ship grounded stern first on the beach, where her ribs and keel until quite recently were a tourist attraction.

The tropical storm continued the following day when the northern half of Indooroopilly Rail Bridge was washed away and part of the Victoria Bridge, spanning the Brisbane River, collapsed.

 

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