The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Wragge, Clement Lindley

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1462141The Dictionary of Australasian Biography — Wragge, Clement LindleyPhilip Mennell

Wragge, Clement Lindley, F.R.G.S, F.R.Met.S., the son of a solicitor, was born at Stourbridge, Worcestershire, on Sept. 18th, 1852, and educated at Uttoxeter Grammar School, Staffordshire. In early life he visited Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North America; and in 1876 arrived in Adelaide and surveyed the Flinders Ranges and Murray Scrub, as a clerk in the Surveyor-General's department, forming a collection of native weapons, which he presented to the town of Stafford. In England Mr. Wragge studied meteorology and climature, and established three observatories in the Churnet Valley and Moorlands of North Staffordshire, a fourth on the summit of Ben Nevis (4406 feet high), and a fifth in connection therewith at Fort William; the two last under the auspices of the Scottish Meteorological Society. Returning to Australia in Jan. 1884, he established the Torrens Observatory at Walkerville, near Adelaide, and one at Mount Lofty, S.A., in October of the same year. Mr. Wragge was appointed Meteorological Observer for Queensland in Jan. 1887. He was elected F.R.G.S. in 1875, and is also a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, the Society of Arts, the Royal Societies of Queensland and South Australia, and honorary corresponding member of the Scottish Geographical Society.