Lennox Walker, Queensland's popular weather forecaster

E. Linacre

1/'98


A weather forecaster popular with farmers in eastern Australia was Lennox Walker of Crohamhurst in southern Queensland. He reckoned to give 2-5 day forecasts each Friday night in a Sydney newspaper in the 1970’s, for instance, stating the occurrence of rain and the daily maximum temperature. His success appears never to have been demonstrated in any publicly available scientific report, but his supporters were undeterred. Nor were they worried by the secrecy of his methods, reputedly based on a belief in the cyclic influences of sunspots and the planets, e.g. Jupiter. The procedures, whatever they were, were handed down to Lennox by Inigo Jones. The latter was in charge at Crohamhurst until 1954, and a disciple of the famous Clement Wragge. Wragge was head of the Brisbane Meteorological Bureau until 1900 and pioneered hail suppression, although with little success (Note 9.J).