Necessity is the mother of invention, and desperate times bring desperate measures, in this episode of One Town at a Time we explore a bit of ancient weather modification technology in the small South Western town of Charleville, uncovering the famed Vortex rainmaking guns.
As the crow flies, Charleville is 683km west of the QLD capital of Brisbane.
Named in 1868 by Surveyor William Alcock Tully after his home town in Ireland, modern day Charleville has a local population of 3500.
SW QLD is home to a strong sheep and cattle grazing industry as well as grain, cotton and forestry. It is a centre for agricultural innovations, developing sustainable farming practices and trialling climate adaptation practices.
“See these big monstrosities behind me. They are what is known as the Steiger Vortex Rain Making Guns. Now the Story goes, back in 1902, a guy called Clement Wragge, well he thought he was a self confessed rain maker and he convinced the local council to build half a dozen of these particular guns all around the town in strategic positions and the plan was to fire them up into the air, fire some kind of gas, some kind of gun powder, I don’t know, some kind of explosion to change the atmospheric pressure around the place and cause it to rain. Well they tried it and in about 10 mins a few sprinkles came down, so they took that as a good sign, so later on that day they tried it again, and unfortunately a couple of them exploded during that second go at it. So needless to say unfortunately it didn’t work as they were hoping and these two are all that is left. There you go a bit of ancient weather modification technology. Visit Australian small towns and check out some of the cool freaky shit like this”.
@kieran.wicks #question from @kieran.wicks #OneTownataTime #Charleville #TouringMusician #Invention #Experiment #WeatherModification #Drought #Flood #RainMaking #Vortex #Historian #LivingArtLifestyle #TourDiary #TourGuide #QLD #Technology #CrazyInvention #Strange #ClimateChange #CloudSeeding ♬ original sound - Kieran.Wicks
