Rosea Kemp

{{Short description|Australian meteorologist}}

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Rosea Lilian Kemp (5 June 1941 – 27 December 2015) was an Australian meteorologist.

Rosea Lilian Boyd was born on 5 June 1941 in Melbourne, and named after Mount Rosea, in The Grampians, where her parents had taken their honeymoon.{{cite encyclopedia |publisher=Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology |title=Kemp, Rosea Lilian - Person |encyclopedia= Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation |url=https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P005693b.htm |access-date=6 February 2024}}{{cite journal |last1=Voice |first1=Mary |last2=Zillman |first2=John |title=Rosea Lillian Kemp 1941-2015 |journal=Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society |date=2016 |volume=29 |page=17-19 |url=https://issuu.com/amosadmin/docs/bamos_febmarch_2016_web/18}} She attended Hampton High School and MacRobertson Girls' School.{{cite news |title=Jobs With A Difference... Calculating The Climate Their Task |work=The Age |date=1 January 1960 |page=6}}

She was first woman to be awarded an Australian Bureau of Meteorology cadetship, enabling her to study for a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Melbourne.{{cite book|title=Windows on Meteorology: Australian Perspective|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cyZKz1XOvHsC&pg=PA103|year=1997|publisher=Csiro Publishing|isbn=9780643060388|page=103}} She joined the bureau in 1959, after her mother successfully lobbied for a change in the rules to allow women to apply for cadetships, and was one of two women who were the second and third to graduate from its training school, in 1962.{{cite web |title=The weather women: how a group of pioneers brought equality to Australian meteorology |url=https://media.bom.gov.au/social/blog/748/the-weather-women-how-a-group-of-pioneers-brought-equality-to-australian-meteorology/ |publisher=Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology |access-date=7 February 2024 |date=30 April 2015}}

Moving to England, she achieved fame as a weather forecaster for BBC radio in London, employed—as was usual at the time—by the Met Office.{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/ec2ec97e#p009y1fj |title=Desert Island Discs - Castaway : Rosea Kemp |work=BBC Online |publisher=BBC |accessdate=27 July 2014}} She was then the only woman broadcasting weather forecasts in England.{{Cite news |date=1 April 1969 |title=Three Pages for Women The girl who feels like a fish in a bowl |first=Anne-Marie |last=Rendell |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article107086384 |access-date=11 February 2024 |work=Canberra Times |page=21 }} During that period, she appeared as a castaway on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 25 December 1968. She also met and married fellow Australian John Kemp, while working in the UK.{{cite news |title=A Rosea View of the Weather |work=Evening Times |date=27 March 1968 |page=5}}

After returning to Australia on 1 December 1969, on board the SS Oriana,{{cite news |title=Bringing Sunshine? |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=30 November 1969}} she again worked at the Bureau of Meteorology, and then ran a consultancy, called Weatherex, with Don Douglas, studying the storms of the New South Wales coast, before returning to the bureau for a third stint in September 1988.

She received the Bureau of Meteorology long-service award in 2003, in the presence of her mother.

She died on 27 December 2015 in Sydney, survived by two sons. An obituary was published in the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

She was described as:

{{Quote|a trailblazer for women in Australian meteorology, being the first woman to be awarded a cadetship by the Bureau of Meteorology to study for her BSc}}

by The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation.