BAMOS August 2025
22 Article
Obituary for Rex Falls
Peter Price, Bruce Neal, Douglas Gauntlett, Greg Holland, Geoff Love, Mark Williams, Ann Farrell, John Zillman
Rex Falls PSM, Honorary AMOS Fellow, distinguished tropical analyst, forecaster, mentor, and universally admired long-time Bureau of Meteorology Regional Director for the Northern Territory and Queensland, passed away at the Gold Coast on 2 May 2025, aged 84.
Rex was born on 4 February 1941 and joined the Bureau of Meteorology in Sydney, along with Peter Price and Margaret Amos, as a Cadet Meteorologist in 1959. He gained his Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney in 1961 and undertook the Bureau Meteorologist-in-Training Course Number 12 in 1962-63.
He spent his entire professional career at the Bureau. He was initially posted to Adelaide Airport in 1963 and then to Darwin Airport for the remainder of 1963-64, before being detached for two years as a forecaster— with the rank of Flight Lieutenant— at the RAAF Base in Butterworth, Malaysia. He returned to Darwin in 1967, first as a Meteorologist Class 2 and then as a Class 3 in the new Northern Territory Regional Office. He was promoted to the position of Supervising Meteorologist( Class 4) at the Queensland Regional Forecasting Centre in 1974-75, before returning to Darwin for nine years( 1975-84), serving as Regional Director for the last seven.
In 1985, he was promoted to succeed Ray Wilkie as Regional Director Queensland, a role he carried out with great distinction for the next 15 years, including after the position was upgraded into the Senior Executive Service in 1999. He retired from the Bureau and from the Australian Public Service on 7 July 2000.
Throughout his career, Rex played a leading role in the development of Australian tropical meteorology and tropical cyclone forecasting. He was the driving force for the implementation of the Bureau’ s‘ Automated Tropical Analysis System’, and he inaugurated the‘ Darwin Tropical Diagnostic Statement’.
In 1983, he co-authored what was, for some years, the definitive CSIRO Book on‘ Climate of Papua New Guinea’. He successfully championed the establishment of an upper air station at Gove. In his 23 years as Regional Director in Darwin and Brisbane, he led or served on a host of Territory and State Government natural disaster committees and planning bodies. His clear and calm explanations and advice, on television, to coastal communities threatened by tropical cyclones and floods contributed greatly to community safety over several decades.
Rex was equally at home and influential in the operational and research communities. He was widely regarded as a role model for Bureau Regional Directors and was a valued mentor to a successor generation of Regional Directors, including Jim Arthur, Mike Bergin, Geoff Crane, Gary Foley, Bruce Gunn, Ann Farrell, Jim Davidson, Geoff Love and Mark Williams, as well as to the Greg Holland and John McBride generation of Australian tropical cyclone researchers.
Rex doing one of the things he loved best, fishing. Credit: Lyn Falls
Rex also became substantially entrained in international meteorology. He was a Visiting Scientist at the US National Hurricane and Experimental Meteorological Laboratory in Miami from February to December 1980. Additionally, he became involved, at an early stage, in bilateral cooperation with the China Meteorological Administration as a member of the 1985 Bureau of Meteorology scientific delegation to China led by Doug Gauntlett and including Mary Voice, Mike Moore and Mike Manton. According to Doug, Rex played a very effective role as an Australian respondent to the succession of Chinese toasts at formal functions.
Rex also became involved in various World Meteorological Organization activities and contributed a strong operational meteorological voice to the Australian delegation at the 1991 World Meteorological Congress in Geneva.
Out of the office, Rex was a keen fisherman, and many former meteorological colleagues enjoyed fishing trips in his boat. He was also a keen runner and enjoyed tennis, squash and golf. Several of his former Bureau classmates on Meteorologist-in- Training Course 12, including Doug Gauntlett, Peter Price and Bob Brook, have recalled happy times with Rex and his‘ twoseater Chevrolet Roadster with accompanying rear Dicky seat’ and weekend trips to Portsea, the ski slopes and beyond. Peter Price recalls Rex teaching him to drive in Sydney and then sharing a St Kilda flat when they were on course in Melbourne. Bruce Neal, who was a Sydney Cadet a year after Rex, recalls Rex showing him around when he first joined the Bureau and entrusting him with his house, canoe and Red Baron sail boat