BOM wx sort criteria.
In the early days of the review there was considerable discussion within most parts of industry to ensure not much adverse effect. a sliding scale was discussed where fuel, navaids review and GPS approach availability, AWS, wx and runway lighting was used to ensure the requirements of both rpt and ems were met . In NSW for example forbes lost out as no AWS, no jet a and no rpt but Parkes was kept. Bathurst also stayed due to the large number of trainers which in those days( a couple of years ago ) services Bankstown cross country trainers.
Some upper hunter valley locations were also kept due to the significance for IFR EMS operations. I think Scone fell into this bucket.
BoM acted fairly quickly to identify some locations vis eastern end of Torres Strait where the installation of an AWS would be of significant benefit to IFR operations and particularly IFR ems helos. The installation was done with a combination of aviation and public wx money. The public wx input was for cyclone monitoring.
happy to discuss further offline. No I don't work for the Bom