Clement Wragge, second right, stands in a fleecy coat at his campsite near the summit of Mount Kosciusko in December, 1897, with the crew who set up the weather station. Picture: Charles H Kerry, Wragge’s Camp, Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, c.1900, National Library of Australia, Tyrrell Collection, Bib ID 515584
RAIN GOD - Ian J Frazer
The highs and lows of Australia’s first celebrity meteorologist
Rain God — the first detailed biography of meteorologist Clement Lindley Wragge, published in April 2023 — has already been launched in Canberra, Brisbane, Townsville, Oakamoor (North Staffordshire) and Fort William (Scotland). Further events are planned in 2024, in New Zealand, and Western Queensland, but you can buy the book now — $A35 plus postage — from this website, or from the Paperchain Bookstore in Canberra, ACT, and Mary Who? Bookshop in Townsville,
CLEMENT WRAGGE hardly knew his parents. They died young, leaving him a small fortune and a quirky name. He spent their money on barometers and thermometers and revelled in his nickname `Inclement’ the pernickety weatherman. Would he have been as famous far and wide if baptised William — the name registered on his birth certificate in September 1852, then dropped by his folks? In Scotland in1881 and `82, he was hailed the Hero of Ben Nevis for his daily weather-watching treks on Britain’s highest peak. His long reign as Queensland’s first Government Meteorologist, from 1887 to 1902, prickled with personal and political highs and lows. After abandoning Australia in 1903, Wragge took his yen for science and spirituality around the world with a gaslight projector, pictures of the universe and a speck of radium. He and his common-law wife —fellow Theosophist Louisa Horne — settled in New Zealand. In 1920, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called him Auckland’s most remarkable personality — with “Dreamer, mystic and expert on all matters of ocean and air.”
Clement Wragge
Clement Wragge and his dog Robin Renzo outside his observatory on the 4406 feet high (1435m) summit of Ben Nevis, Scotland, 1881
From a photo by P. Macfarlane, Fort William.
Louisa Horne (right) met Wragge in 1897 while sailing from Hawaii to New Zealand. She and US-born physician Dr Emily Ryder (far right) were members of the Little Wives of India Mission, campaigning to lift the age of consent for Hindu child brides. Louisa became Wragge’s partner in 1899 after his separation from his wife, Nora Thornton, in 1899. He called Louisa Edris — his wise woman. She died in 1924, aged 60.
Wragge, (Below, right) poses with six Stiger cannons before the guns were railed to Charleville in August, 1902. The other men are probably William Harvey and son James, engineers of Margaret Street, Brisbane. In October, 1902, news that two of the cannons had burst during firing prompted Harvey and Son to issue a statement defending the guns’ heavy duty construction. State Library of Queensland Image No 85049
