Jane Bunn from Channel 7 chats about weather, home life and growing up in Beaumaris

MELBOURNE’S favourite meteorologist, Jane Bunn, has opened up about the daily male attention she receives – including her secret for dealing with “gross stuff”.

WHEN Jane Bunn stumbled into a software engineering lecture at age 18, she didn’t even look twice at the weather forecast.

She was running late, as always, and itching to start a career in IT.

The third-generation Beaumaris teen was drama captain at Brighton’s Firbank Girls Grammar School and filled her nights and weekends at ballet, jazz and tap.

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But the now famed meteorologist turned her back on performance, convinced she would thrive in software engineering after studying IT in VCE.

“It was all pretty boxes in school but when I got to uni, it was zeros and ones and not so pretty,” the 39-year-old said. “On the first day of uni, I can picture myself slamming the door and walking into a hushed auditorium with all these boys. I did a quick scan and found someone like me — a girl — and it turns out my husband Michael was sitting there too.”

Before long, Bunn had ditched the idea of being a software engineer and was heading off on a snow trip with Michael instead.

It was there her love of weather first began.

Jane Bunn joins Victorians every night to present her eight-day forecast on Channel 7.

“I was 19 and from that point, it became my hobby to look at the weather and see when the next snowfall was coming and why it was snowing,” she said.

“That grew for a love of all weather and I decided to make it my career.”

She’s since gained thousands of devoted fans — with one man even getting a tattoo of her face on his chest. When you ask her about her fame, she laughs it off, saying it’s something she’ll never get used to.

“People come up to me in the street and think they know me, but I’ve never seen them before in my life,” she said.

“The male commentary is what it is and I put a filter on it. If it’s surrounded by gross stuff, I just leave it alone and go straight over it. It’s the only way to keep myself sane.”

The presenter has become used to being surrounded by men — first when studying software engineering, then completing a Bachelor of Science at Monash University in 2005, and going on to be one of nine to complete a graduate diploma of meteorology at the Bureau of Meteorology.

“Being in that field as a woman, you feel like you’re treading new ground and sorting things out,” she said.

“At the end of that course, I did training in a non-real environment and it was my first experience of a nightshift from 7pm to 7am.

“It’s amazing because it’s 2am and you’re working with five others.

“The world feels really quiet and it’s like you’re keeping an eye on it, keeping watch on it, and making sure everything is OK.”

A Geelong tattoo artist has given someone a Jane Bunn tattoo.

She went on to work in Sydney and Canberra, as well as regional Victoria before ending up back in Melbourne in 2014 working for ABC and now Channel 7 and 3AW.

Her days are long, beginning with a radio broadcast in her pyjamas from her Docklands home, to 4pm and 6pm news broadcasts on Channel 7, plus advising farming communities, the Country Fire Authority and the Department of Environment and Primary Industries.

She tries to fit in a trip to the gym, and time for her other love — food and wine.

But the changeable seasons and unpredictability of the weather remains the constant in her busy schedule.

“The weather is the thing that can have major implications for our world,” the popular presenter said.

“It can create major drama and huge disruptions to the way we live, way we work and the way we travel.

“Just like (fog covering the airport), it’s amazing how a small thing that some people find incredibly beautiful could have such a major effect on something else.

“Most days aren’t the same and it keeps us on our toes.”

Jane Bunn's dog Stampy.

The weather consultant said one of her more challenging roles was working at the RAAF’s Williamtown base near Newcastle early in her career, when she was consulting pilots on the weather and they needed to know “exactly when it would rain”.

She’s also covered Black Saturday and the Queensland floods, admitting it was a scary experience to see exactly how powerful weather systems can be.

“One cameraman (on Black Saturday) said he was wearing proper boots and could feel the cement burning through his boots,” Bunn said.

“I was in Sydney so I was slightly disconnected but it’s a big, important, scary thing and so many emotions run through you at times like that.”

And she said as the world tried to correct the imbalances going forward, we would experience hotter and longer heatwaves.

“You can see it happening and while Melbourne didn’t break any records in April, Sydney has and Mildura has and Adelaide has.

Bunn addresses farmers on all things weather at the Wimmera Machinery Field Day.

“There are lots of places that are constantly experiencing things we haven’t recorded before.”

Bunn is hoping to be front and centre in the weather sector until she’s “very, very old” — and keep getting the right messages out there.

“One of the reasons I got into media was there was a woman in Sydney on the radio who was driving me nuts with her (misinformed) weather broadcasts,” she said.

“I want the right message to get through. We’re busy on the sides working on an app that will essentially take the best data that’s out and provide something that people can quickly look at.”

Food and wine is also something she’d like to explore more in the media sector, and hopes one day the right opportunity will present itself.

Until then, she’ll keep joining people across Victoria for dinner.

“Can you imagine me talking about anything other than weather?,” she laughed.

“I’m never quite sure if people actually want to discuss weather with me in the depth I was going into, or if they’re just being polite.

“It’s the great start to any conversation but I take it one step further.”