Continuing on with the theme of Southerly Busters, cool changes and etymology, read this and wonder:

""There is only one thing you can do gives relief.  Light your pipe, mix your sherry cobbler, and smoke and drink until the change arrives.

The "Southerly Buster", as this change is called, generally comes
            -sounding on;
        Like the storm from Labrador,
        The wind Euroclydon",
early in the evening.  A cloud of dust -- they call it, in Sydney, a "brickfielder" -- thicker than any London fog, heralds its approach, and moves like a compact wall across the country.  In a minute the temperature will sink fifty or sixty degrees, and so keenly does the sudden change affect the system, that hot toddy takes the place of the sherry cobbler, and your great-coat is buttoned tightly around you until a fire can be lighted.  Now, if you look from your window in the direction where you saw the white vapour ascending in the morning, a spectacle terrible in its magnificence will meet your eye.  For miles around --- as far as the gaze can reach -- bush fires are blazing.........."

                    Frank Fowler, 1859:  "Southern Lights and Shadows: Being brief notes of three years experience of social, literary and political life in Australia"
 

Ah... my.. What can I say? a few brief points:

a)  It is clear from our discussions and quotes that term "change" in context of a sudden transition to cooler conditions was common terminology in late 19th century Australia.  It seems so common, I wonder if it was picked up from the UK.  At some stage I shall bundle together the discussion we have had so far and send it off to some UK Met Office colleagues and see if any one there can shed light on the matter.

b)  The imagery of the wall of dust of course conjurs up visions of the famous Melbourne dust storm of Feb 1983 whereby the dust was in the cold airmass, and so created a visualisation of the cold air boundary/surface,  with the dust wall having  the classical cleft and lobe features of a density current.

c)  Why did all cold fronts have a dust cloud in Sydney in the early days? Clearly there must have been  loose soil (to the west? to the south? as there was in Melbourne at the end of the 1982-83 El Nino, and as there was in the Great Plains of the U.S. in the dustbowl era of the 30's.  Local NSW RFC historians -- here's something to look in to.

d)  This early quote links the cool changes to the occurrence of bushfires.  Are there earlier links that we know of?
 
 

On other matters.... I shall be quiet for a couple of weeks.  I shall be up in a small apartment overlooking Sydney harbour for much of next week on a short honeymoon with that nice looking girl from the VRO; then the next week I'll be in SanDiego at the AMS Tropical meeting.  While I am gone, there are two options:  either have a rest or keep the discussion going.

cheer
John McB

Elly Spark
John,

A suggestion to explain the dust and "brickfielder".  Brick pits were located to
the South of the cuty, and the southerly bursters stirred up the dust.

Dick Whittacker John Colquhoun, do you know more.?

Elly Spark

John Colquhoun

John and Elly,

My understanding of the origins of "Brickfielder" is that the southerly change generated clouds of dust from the
brick pits at Brickfield Hill in the 1800's. This information is I think contained in Hunt's 1894 paper. Brickfield Hill
was near the corner of Goulburn and Pitt Sts in Sydney. So the source of the dust was local and different to the
Melbourne 1983 event.

John, the Fowler (1859) quote is interesting given that the change is called a "buster" rather than the Hunt spelling of "burster".

Sincerely

John Colquhoun

Neville Nicholls

John, John & Elly:

Sidney Baker ("The Australian Language", 1945) concurs with the brickfields explanation:
"brickfielder ... originally described a heavy cold southerly gale  bringing dirt and dust to the
Sydney settlement from nearby brickfields....Brickfielder has now gone out of use in N.S.W., but
still survives in Victoria, where it is applied to a hot, dusty wind that blows from  he interior".

So, under this definition perhaps the 1983 Melbourne dust storm was a "brickfielder"?

Baker also says "The southerly buster or, as refined people once preferred to call it, the burster...".

Neville