Meet Mawson's new Bureau of Meteorology team
Hi there. We're Deb and Dan, your recently arrived Mawson 79th ANARE Bureau of Meteorology team. We're here to provide all of your Mawson observing and meteorological technician needs for the next twelve months.
I'm Deb. In a past life, I've been a meteorologist with the Bureau for 11 years, having completed four summer seasons as a forecaster in Antarctica. Throughout that time, I always wanted to graduate to the ranks of winterer and so decided to 'cross to the dark side' and become a weather observer for a year. So far, I think I've found a pretty great place to do that.
I'm Dan. Having spent the winter in Antarctica for the 2023-2024 season as a Senior Communications Technician with the Australian Antarctic Division, I fell in love with maintaining the equipment that helps keep us safe and provides us the ability to conduct science and keep up essential communications back home. I gravitated to pursue a career with the Bureau back home to maintain our essential weather stations. Shortly after getting a job, I was offered a temporary assignment of duties to come down south and do another season as a met tech. Although the job is different to my last trip down south, the experience has already been nothing short of amazing.
We started the journey to Mawson back in June 2025 when we attended 2-3 months of training at the Bureau of Meteorology Training Centre in Melbourne, learning all we needed to know about releasing weather balloons, performing manual observations and fixing meteorological technical equipment. Then, after a bit of time back in our normal jobs, we started our Antarctic training program to prepare us for living and working at Mawson station. This included a wide-ranging training schedule involving leadership, working at heights, fire fighting, search and rescue, and competent crew training to name a few.
Having completed all of these, we excitedly embarked onto the RSV Nuyina in the middle of February and started our journey down south, assisting our friends at CSIRO every few days with ARGO float deployments to do our little bit for science. These floats bob up and down in the ocean and gather data about ocean conditions.
We've now been at Mawson for a couple of weeks and after a hectic resupply and handover period, are gradually settling into the routine of day to day life – three hourly observations, an afternoon weather balloon and a bunch of other things to keep us busy. So far, this seems like a pretty great place to spend the next year and we can't wait to see what adventures unfold!
