Marong Tornado
27th September 1911
Clyve Herbert
There is an area of Australia known as the Golden Triangle,
it is a region where from time to time someone gets out of a tourist bus or car and kicks
a stone on the ground that turns out to be a 25,000 dollar gold nugget! At other
times someone walks out of the bush with a dinosaur of a piece of gold that sets them up
for life......Forget about the gold!....Because, if you're a weather enthusiast or storm
chaser this region should be called the 'Tornado Triangle' of Australia. So now that I
have your attention, you may suddenly have a desire as a weather enthusiast to climb
into your chase vehicle and burn off down the road eyes plastered skyward, but before you
do anything like that I had better tell you where this golden place for weather hunters
is......Come to Victoria!
The region I am describing is north of Melbourne,
situated between Daylesford and Bendigo and westward to Maryborough - it marks out a nice
triangle shape on the map. So why would I claim this area to be a tornado
triangle?......simply because it has bred some monster supercells and large destructive
tornadoes officially recorded up to F3 by the Weather Bureau, and not just the odd storm
either - there have been dozens of them over the past 100 years or so. Officially the
locality is part of the north central region of Victoria, a very
interesting district, ranging from moist elevated woodland in the south and dry
woodland/grassland in the north, the topography gradually rises from around 200m in the
northwest of the region to about 800m in the south. Apart from the occasional severe
storm, the southern parts receive the odd respectable snowfall - frosts can be a real pipe
breaking event in winter throughout the region. The trick of the 'Triangle' though is the
gradual upslope tendency from north to south, in the summer period the north of the region
can become very hot, and without going into too much atmospheric detail, under suitable
conditions, coinciding with the passage of a trough or cold front enhanced updrafting
through the region can lead to spectacular severe weather. Apart from the district's potential for significant storms and monster lumps of gold, there are many little known events of disastrous storms within the region. One of these events occurred in the year 1911....... On the 27th September of this year, a large tornado touched down near to the town of Marong just west of Bendigo..... Ok, a report of a tornado..... but this was no ordinary tornado, because someone was there with a camera! As the tornado moved onto the town of Marong, a Mr C Hosken was standing in his backyard snapping away with his box camera (or something similar). The photograph reproduced here is one of them, and it's very significant, because I think it just may be the first photograph of an Australian tornado! Mr Hosken went on to follow the tornado and photograph its damage path which went for almost 20 kilometres.... Below is an summary of his (and others) description taken from an official report in the Bureau of Meteorology's monthly weather review....... On the 27th of September, 1911, one of the most violent and destructive tornadoes in Australian meteorological history occurred near Bendigo, Victoria. The existence of an extensive trough over central parts of Australia, the comparatively high temperatures experienced, and the effect of recent showers in the vicinity subsequently affected, comprised conditions eminently favourable to the formation of a cyclonic disturbance. The day of the storm, especially the afternoon, was 'close' and thundery and as the time of the occurrence approached, the sky assumed a peculiar threatening blue black appearance! The fine photograph of the actual storm cloud which has reproduced was obtained from Mr C. Hosken when the tornado was three miles northwest of Marong......in the form of an inverted cone of cloud, the tornado started between Leichhardt and Derby, at about 2.30pm, and then followed a serpentine course varying between 50m and 150m in width and continued for more than 12 miles, and lasting about half of an hour. Violent thunder and hail accompanied the storm, many 'blocks of ice' that fell were the size of Safety matchboxes, while some were half a kilo in weight!. The tornado moved along a south easterly course and levelling substantial buildings and large amounts of mature trees on the way, many hundreds of metres of fencing were carried away. At the settlement of Spring Hut an extraordinary spectacle of seeing some homes flattened and others spared were witnessed, then passing to the south, the tornado gained strength and turned towards the town of Marong where a considerable amount of damage was done and two people seriously injured, one later dying form his injuries. The most spectacular damage was done to a gold ore crushing battery building constructed if steel and iron which was completely destroyed with mangled iron parts carried away and found several miles into the surrounding forest!.. from Marong the tornado continued onto the town of Lockwood and virtually destroyed every home and caused many injuries, after Lockwood the tornado declined in strength and soon dissipated. As can be seen by this report this was a significant tornado, in 1976 the now famous Sandon tornado swept across a similar distance just to the south of this area, unfortunately killing two people. There are numerous reports of big tornadoes in this region of Victoria, frequently reported in spring. What is more astounding though, not only are there photographs of this tornado available but synoptic charts as well... what more would you want? - after all it was 1911.
At the time there was in charge of the Weather Bureau an extraordinary man ....Mr H. A. Hunt who did a study of this tornado, but his descriptions of weather at the time, not just tornadoes, but any weather event were remarkable...but that's another story!!...... Acknowledgments....Australian
Monthly Weather Review - BOM. |
