Tasmanian Government Research Articles

Conferenee of representatives from the surveyors boards of Australia and New Zealand

Abstract From the Abridged Report, printed in the Tasmanian Government Gazette, we learn that the Conference met in the New Library, Parliament House, Hobart, on January 18th, 19th, 20th, and 23rd, 1911. New South Wales was represented by Mr. R. H. Cambage, Chief Mining Surveyor; Mr. S. R. Dobbie, President of the Institution of Surveyors; and Mr. R. P. Sellors, Secretary of the Board and Secretary of the Conference Recess Committee. All the other States, and also New Zealand, were represented.

The New Meteorological Station on Mount Wellington

A VIEW of the new meteorological observatory on Mount Wellington, Tasmania, is shown in the accompanying illustration. As we announced in a previous issue (July 25), the observatory was begun in May last, and it will be to the southern hemisphere what the Ben Nevis and other high-level observatories are to the northern. Mount Wellington is about four miles distant from Hobart, and rises almost directly from the level of the sea. The station is supplied with a “Fortin” mountain barometer, “Richard” barograph and thermograph, dry-wet, and maximum and minimum, thermometers, as well as a “5-inch” gauge with extra deep rim for retaining snow. Similar instruments are in use at the Springs (2495 ft.) and at Hobart, 160 feet above sea-level. Mr. Clement L. Wragge, Superintendent of the Chief Weather Bureau, Brisbane, has organised the stations. Very valuable results, bearing upon the distribution of pressure, temperature and humidity attaching to anticyclonic and cyclonic systems through vertical sections of the atmosphere in the northern and southern hemispheres respectively, will probably be forthcoming when the Mount Wellington and Hobart results appear and are discussed side by side with those obtained at Ben Nevis and Fort William. Except for a few degrees of latitude, Mount Wellington and Hobart are geographically and physiographically almost the very counterparts in the southern hemisphere of Ben Nevis and Fort William in the northern. Mr. Wragge has entirely reorganised the Tasmanian Government Meteorological Service on federal principles in direct connection with the Queensland Weather Service, and he was enabled to perform this work through the courtesy of the Queensland Government, who allowed him as their officer to render federal aid in the cause of science to the sister colony. Mr. H. C. Kingsmill has charge of the Tasmanian section.