KEY POINTS:
Meteorologist Clement Wragge was always ahead of his time.
At 32, when he was appointed chief of the weather office in Queensland in 1884, he was already highly regarded for his long-range forecasts, especially droughts.
Born in England, Wragge had a wandering, curious spirit. He set up a weather station on Ben Nevis, Britain's highest mountain, and climbed up daily for a year for readings. He put another on the summit of Mt Kosciusko, the highest mountain in Australia.
Not all his ideas worked. One famous failure involved a rain-making experiment when six big guns fired a volley towards clouds over parched Queensland paddocks. A few drops fell, but some of the guns blew up and Wragge was treated with derision.
He settled in Birkenhead in 1910, and created Waiata Tropical Gardens, full of exotic plants. Tourists paid for guided visits and fortune-telling sessions with his Indian wife. The turban-wearing Wragge delivered illustrated lectures with a lantern. He wrote weather reports for the Herald and gave forecasts to farmers and shippers based on instruments at his Birkenhead observatory.
