MACQUARRIE ISLAND.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15452, 3 December 1915, Page 9

MACQUARRIE ISLAND.

"WIRELESS STATION CLOSED. (press association telegp.am.) WELLINGTON. December i'. For tilt* titne being no nioro meteorological reports will bo received in New Zealand from the Macquarrie Island wireless station, which was established liv iSir Douglas Mawson as a branch of his Antarctic Expedition, and subsequently taken over by the Commonwealth Government. The Dominion Meteorologist reported yesterday that the station had been closed temporarily, the final message having been received on Wednesday. It appeals mat the Commonwealth Weather Bureau at Melbourne has sent awav about ten members of its staff in connexion with the war, and is unable any longer to spare the skilled meteorologist who has been stationed on Macquarrie Island. New Zealand has contributed towards the support of the station, •which has proved of the utmost importance in the investigation of weather condition*, in the Southern Hemisphere. For this ro;isoo it is considered to be rather pity that the station has to bo closed at the present time, especially as Sir Ernest Shackleton's Expedition is still in the South, and the Macquarrie Island plant would have been a most important link in co-ordinating Antarctic conditions with ; those experienced in lower latitudes. Messages first began to be transmitted to Wellington from the island on March. 12th, 1912.