ancy-bird

Nancy Bird Walton died last week at the grand old age of 93. She was a much admired person who contributed a great deal to aviation in its early years in this country and paved the way for women pilots of the future.

Fascinated by planes from an early age Nancy never wavered on her path to the skies and after eventually overcoming parental objections learned to fly as a pupil at Kingsford Smith’s flying school, at age 17 in 1933. After gaining her pilot’s licence to carry passengers at age 19 – the first woman pilot in Australia to do so - she travelled around country shows and race meetings giving joy-rides to passengers.

This, however, was a limited way to earn money to keep the plane and the person flying it and later she was offered the opportunity to be the first pilot employed by the Far West Children’s Health Scheme. She accepted this post with alacrity and spent the next three years stationed at Bourke in the far west of New South Wales doing charter work in between her flights for the FWCHS in order to meet the financial commitments of owning a plane.

It was at this time while doing charter work out of Cunnamulla, in far west Queensland, that the following took place; it is quoted from a page in her autobiography, Nancy Bird – My God! It’s a Woman, as an explanation of the title and is indicative of the generally held view of women pilots at the time.

In 1936, I was the only charter pilot in Cunnamulla, Queensland. Charles Russell, a well known grazier, was visiting one of his properties when he was marooned by flood waters. I walked into his agent’s office just as Charles was being told by phone that the aircraft was being sent to rescue him. The agent told Charles to give the pilot landing instructions, and then handed me the telephone. I took the receiver and said ‘Hello’. There was a stunned silence and then a horrified voice uttered, ‘My God! It’s a woman’.

Nancy went on to do many things throughout her life connected with aviation: travelling through Europe gathering aviation information just prior to WW2, founding the Australian Women’s Pilots Association, competing internationally in air races and amongst all that, marrying and raising two children.

At one time, when she was looking for someone to sponsor her in an air race, she approached Sir Hudson Fysh at Qantas. He was quite keen but the Public Relations department would have none of it; sponsoring a single engine aircraft in a transcontinental race in the United States? It was not what they considered to be safe flying.

Last year however, Qantas at last saw fit to recognise Nancy’s contribution to aviation and named their first A380 in her honour.