The Crohamhurst Observatory is a heritage-listed observatory at 131 Crohamhurst Road, Crohamhurst, Sunshine Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1935. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 13 November 2008.
History
Crohamhurst Observatory was constructed in 1935 on Inigo Owen Jones' property Crohamhurst, near Peachester. It was built for use by Jones as the site of solar and planetary observations and weather measurements used in long-range weather forecasting, and as the headquarters of his forecasting service. As such it is important in demonstrating the role of weather observing and recording in the history of Queensland and is a rare example of land use for long-range weather forecasting purposes. Inigo Jones was a well-known long-range weather forecaster throughout Australia from the 1920s until his death in 1954 and Crohamhurst Observatory has a special association with his life and work.
Meteorological observation and recording by Europeans in Australia commenced with the arrival of the First Fleet and spread across the continent with the tide of settlement. By the end of the 19th century the importance of meteorology was recognised and most colonies had established their own meteorological services, including Queensland from 1887. They prepared daily weather charts, issued forecasts and had begun the development of a climatological data bank. Following Federation, the Commonwealth Government assumed national responsibility for meteorological services when legislation creating the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology was passed in 1906. From its inception until the late 1980s the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology concentrated upon providing accurate short-term weather forecasts and creating a record of Australian weather observations. Finally in the 1990s, Australian scientists emerged as experts in the preparation of seasonal outlooks for the practical application to agriculture and other sectors.
Interest in predicting long-range weather trends dated from the middle of the 19th century, at the same time that meteorological observation was establishing itself as a scientific pursuit to enable daily weather forecasting. The appearance of spots on the surface of the Sun had been the source of conjecture for a long time. Around the middle of the 19th century it was recognised that the number of sunspots increased and decreased on a regular cycle of around 11 years. The hypothesis was that as sunlight dominates humanity's experience of weather, then the sunspot cycle might set in motion regular changes in the Earth's climate. Consequently, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many scientists and enthusiastic amateurs embarked on the hunt for climatic cycles, believing that if such patterns could be found, then it might be possible to forecast the weather months, perhaps years ahead.
In Queensland, German-born MLA Theodore Unmack, who took control of the Postmaster-General's department, including the weather office in 1890, became "convinced of the vast importance of seasonal forecasts" to Queensland. He asked the Queensland Government Meteorologist, Clement Wragge, to investigate and in particular to examine the work of Austrian scientist Eduard Bruckner, who claimed to have discovered a 35-year cycle in the climatic records of Europe. Although initially sceptical, Wragge began to investigate the use of this "Bruckner cycle", combined with the well-known 11 year sunspot cycle, as the basis for long-range weather forecasting.
Other climatic cycle research in the second half of the 19th century related fluctuations in atmospheric pressure with rainfall. These "teleconnections" between weather conditions in different parts of the world such as simultaneous drought in India and Australia, named the Southern Oscillations, were documented and their potential use in seasonal prediction demonstrated. This was later recognised as a climate predicting tool in conjunction with the El Nino (ENSO).
Meanwhile, there was a growing clamour for long-range forecasts in Australia from those dependent upon the land, especially from farmers, which the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology did little to fulfil. This appetite was met in part by Inigo Jones who from 1923 until his death in 1954 provided long-range seasonal weather forecasts from Crohamhurst and Brisbane, depending on his residence.
Inigo Owen Jones was born in England at Croydon, Surrey in 1872, the son of civil engineer, Owen Jones and his wife, Emilie Susanne, née Bernoulli. Arriving in Brisbane on 4 November 1874 on the ship Darling Downs, Jones resided in Brisbane while his father was employed by the Queensland Government as an engineer designing roads and railways. Later the family resided in Owanyilla near Maryborough, and Gympie. He was educated from age 11 until 1888 at the Brisbane Grammar School and completed the University of Sydney Junior Examination.
In 1888 he left school to take up employment at the Queensland Meteorological Bureau working for Clement Lindley Wragge, who had been appointed Colonial Meteorologist in 1887. At the Queensland Meteorological Bureau, Jones was trained in taking weather readings. He worked there until his family left Brisbane in late 1892 to take up residence on a property near Peachester, that they named Crohamhurst after Lord Goschen's Surrey estate.
Although engaged in agricultural work on his parents' property for the next 35 years, Inigo Jones continued his daily weather recordings. He achieved lasting recognition of his meteorological observations when on 2 February 1893 he recorded the highest daily rainfall in Australia () at Crohamhurst.
Motivated by his understanding that farmers and pastoralists needed reliable long-range weather predictions, Inigo Jones pursued the previous work on long-range weather forecasting undertaken by his mentor, Clement Wragge. From 1923 onwards Jones issued the long-range weather forecasts, based on astronomical observations and the repetition of weather cycles, for which he became famous. Through his correspondence with Cyrus Macfarlane the science writer for Brisbane's Daily Mail newspaper, Jones gained his first weather forecast publication. In 1927 Inigo Jones moved to Brisbane where he was paid for articles and forecasts printed in three Brisbane newspapers. He also published articles in the Producer which was issued by the Council of Agriculture, in Country Life from 1931 and in The Land from . He resided in Brisbane with his family until Easter 1935.
Recognition and support of Inigo Jones' work came in the late 1920s. In October 1928 the Queensland Government appointed Jones as director of the Bureau of Seasonal Forecasting of the Council of Agriculture. In the same month the Inigo Jones Seasonal Weather Forecasting Trust was formed with contributions from governments and industry, with the Lord Mayor of Brisbane as Chairman. The Trust raised funds to further Jones' research and successfully lobbied the Queensland State Government to provide an annual subsidy. In 1931 a branch was established in Sydney also with its Lord Mayor as chairman. In 1942 the Long-Range Weather Forecasting Trust, a non-profit body, was established by organisations within primary industry and with further financial assistance from the Queensland Government to enable Jones to pursue his research at Crohamhurst until his death in 1954.
Although two Ministerially-commissioned investigations concluded that his forecasting methods had no scientific basis, the demand for his forecasts remained and after his death the service continued.
Jones' long-range forecasts were based on a complicated series of cycles linking planetary movements and sun spots. He saw the whole solar system as simply a vast electromagnetic machine automatically controlled by the magnetic fields of the planets, which applies among other things, to the seasons. Therefore, if it were known what the conditions were when the same planets stood in the same relation in the past, we could know what conditions would arise now and in the future.
Jones' forecasts were widely distributed and acclaimed during the 1920s and 1930s. Tim Sherratt, one of Inigo Jones' biographers regarded Jones as the most celebrated amongst the ranks of Australia's "weather prophets". Another biographer, John Hogan, wrote in 1969 that of all the non-official weather forecasters who had practised in Australia, particularly in the field of long-range forecasting, there was no-one so widely known throughout the whole continent, and with so great a following of supporters, as Inigo Jones, whose forecasts were in great demand. In 1938 the Land newspaper organised a survey of its readers' opinions of Jones' predictive powers and over the following months published extracts from many. Of the 102 letters received from all over rural New South Wales, only three opposed government funding for Inigo Jones and most attested his accuracy. According to the Canberra Times, Inigo Jones was "one of the outstanding figures" of the 1939 Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) meeting in Canberra. Jones was a determined battler whose "fight for recognition as a long range forecaster" had begun in the early 1920s. Although he had received some support from the Queensland government, the newspaper noted that Commonwealth authorities had been "stubbornly turning deaf ears to his claims".
Newspaper cartoons' such as the Weg's Day cartoon which appeared in the Melbourne Herald Sun on 14 January 1954 lampooning the Commonwealth Meteorological Bureau's forecasting in favour of Inigo Jones' predictions attest to Jones' high profile as a weather forecaster.
Jones won recognition from rural and financial organisations such as the Graziers' Association of NSW, the Queensland Council of Agriculture, CSR Co, and Dalgety and Co, and received much encouragement in his work, as well as aid to finance his observatory so that his work might continue. He held memberships to a number of esteemed overseas organisations. Jones was elected a Fellow of the Astronomical Society in November 1935. He was a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and a member of the Société astronomique de France (Astronomical Society of France), the American Meteorological Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Australia New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Jones also was a member of a variety of Queensland societies that reflected his wide-ranging interests: the Queensland Astronomical Society, Royal Society of Queensland, Historical Society of Queensland and the Town Planning Association of Queensland.
Jones' persistent attempts to have his predictive methods recognised as soundly based, by any substantial body of accredited scientific opinion, failed. A committee of the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology reviewed his system in the late 1930s but rejected his ideas. In the early 1950s persistent agitation for official recognition of Jones' forecasting methods led to the Federal Minister for the Interior establishing a committee to conduct a Departmental investigation into Jones' activities and claims. This committee showed that Jones' forecasts had only a 50 per cent chance of being correct. Biographer, Tim Sherratt, believes that even if Jones' predictions were not valid, he was providing farmers with data on average seasonal conditions in a form that they could use and understand. It may have been that not only the content of his forecasts was important, but the way landholders integrated them with their own knowledge of the local environment.