The Climate of

Townsville & Warunggowa

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The name «Warunggowa» [wærʌŋgəʊə] has been devised by me. It refers to the area of the catchment of the river Burdekin and all the land coastward of it, thus being approximately congruent with the Statistical Division of Northern Queensland. The latter comprises the whole of the shires of Townsville, Thuringowa, Hinchinbrook, Burdekin and Dalrymple, which together cover an area of 80 059 Km² and are inhabited by about 200 000 people today.

The name is composed of two parts:

The first, «Warung-», is derived from one of the names of the Aboriginal tribe, which lived along the banks of the river Burdekin prior to European settlement, the Warungu (for a map, follow this link here).

The second part of the name, «-gowa», is taken from the name of Thuringowa, which is today a part of the city of Townsville but was initially a large shire which embraced most of the area between the river Burdekin and the coast including Townsville, and was thus largely congruent with Warunggowa (for a map, follow this link here). The name of this former shire has been supposed to be a corruption of Thuringia, the name of a German land, which often is called ‹the green heart of Germany›, and had been the home country of Albert of Saxony Coburg-Gotha, the prince consort of Queen Victoria. The motive of the corruption I do not know, but the ending «-gowa» corresponds to a medieval form of the German word «Gau» [gaʊ]. Moreover, as a historical map suggests, Thuringowa may actually not be a corruption of Thuringia but the name of a Gau (Gowe) of the Thuringians like the «Nortthuringowe» (= ‹Northern Gau of the Thuringians› or ‹Northern Gau of Thuringia›, respectively ?) shown on that map (for the map, follow this link here).

This term, gau, originally referred, according to a lexikon, to an area rich in woods and water, yet later to a Germanic tribal district, that is, to the territory of a subgroup of a Germanic tribe. In the middle ages, it often referred to the (sub)districts of the tribal dukedoms of Germany, which were of about the size of ‹normal› shires or countys with usually partially traditional and partially natural borders (whereby these early-medieval German «tribes» had approximately the size of e.g. the English or Irish people and their dukedoms had a size similar to England and Ireland, respectively, so they are not comparable to the much smaller and much more ‹primitive› tribes of the Australian Aborigines). These names have then often been retained as toponymes independently of administrative changes throughout the centuries, whereby -gau or -gäu forms, like «gowa» in «Thuringowa» and «Warunggowa», the second part of the names, with the first part being often derived from the name of the major river in the respective gau, as for example, in : Rheingau, Breisgau, Saargau, Elbgau, Aargau, Thurgau (where the corresponding river names are: Rhein, Breisach, Saar, Elbe, Aare, Thur). Because of its sound and shortness, I like this word, and because of its sense and derivation, it seems very apt here too.

Climate Diagrams

The climate diagrams below where created by me on the basis of data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology [ www.bom.gov.au ].

The map immediately below shows the location of the weather stations in northeastern Queensland for which climate diagrams are available on my pages. On this page the climate diagrams for the stations in the lower, southern part of the satellite photo are shown. You can get to them either by scrolling down, clicking on their names in the list, or by clicking on the corresponding yellow circles on the map.

Climate Diagrams of Selected Weather Stations in › Warungowa ‹
Stations by Name		Stations by Number
NAME	NUMBER	NUMBER	NAME
Ayr	033002	032005	Cape Cleveland
Burdekin Shire Council	033001	032040	Townsville
Cape Cleveland	032005	033001	Burdekin Shire Council
Charters Towers	034002	033002	Ayr
Millaroo	033090	033090	Millaroo
Townsville	032040	034002	Charters Towers

The diagrams are shown in the order of their official numbers, which corresponds roughly to a sequence from north to south.

Please note that the precipitation scales vary between the diagrams.

Station 032005 : Cape Cleveland Lighthouse

Station 032040 : Townsville Aero

Station 033001 : Burdekin Shire Council

Station 033002 : Ayr DPI Research Stn

Station 033090 : Millaroo DPI

Station 034002 : Charters Towers Post Office

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