Exhibition:
Australian Pioneer Aviatrix
EXHIBITION
On International Women’s Day, March 8 2008, this tapestry was presented to the National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame to honour Australian women involved in pioneering aviation.
The Australian Pioneer Aviatrix Tapestry found a home at the Women’s Museum of Australia at the suggestion of pioneer woman Pilot and Patron of the National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame, Nancy Bird Walton.
Started in 2002 and completed in 2008, this community project took over 7,000 hours to weave. Measuring 5 metres x 1.3 metres, the tapestry was worked on by people from Australia and all over the world.
A grant of $23,000 from the Queensland Gaming Benefit Fund was used to purchase materials - including a purpose-built loom and merino wool from the Victorian Tapestry Guild - to create this woven tapestry.
The National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame would like to thank the Tableland Tapestry Weavers from Malanda, Queensland including Patron, Lady Pearl Logan and principal weavers, Lynda Price and Tapestry Project Manager and Pilot, Dale Roger-Jones, as well as photographer Paul Finali for creating the cartoons from Sue Stafford’s Women with Wings photographs and Aviators own photographs.
Bios
Bonnie Henderson
Bonnie was the Australian National Aerobatic Champion for two consecutive years in 1994 and 1995.
Peggy Kelman (nee McKillop)
Peggy flew barnstorming flights in New South Wales in 1935. In one day’s work she achieved 29 take offs. This Aussie pilot claimed but one record: “The first and only pilot to fly from England to Australia whilst pregnant.” Peggy with her great love of flight was still flying well into her eighties.
Millicent Bryant
On March 28 1927, Millicent Bryant became the first Australian woman to gain a pilot’s licence. She drowned later that same year in a Sydney ferry accident.
Beryl Young
Beryl became famous when she was the chief pilot who flew Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen all over the state.
Nancy Bird (nee Walton)
Nancy learnt to fly from Charles Kingsford Smith. In 1935 she was employed by the Far West Children’s Health Scheme to operate her aircraft as an Aerial Ambulance and Baby Clinic becoming the first woman engaged in commercial aviation in Australia.
Robin Miller (nee Dicks)
Robin was a nurse and a pilot. From 1967 -1969 she flew to many remote Aboriginal communities administering the Sabin polio vaccine on sugar cubes. The children called her “the sugarbird lady”. She then flew for the Royal Flying Doctor Service as both a pilot and a nurse. In 1973 she and Rosemary de Pierres competed in the Powder Puff Derby, a trans-American race for female pilots.
Rosemary de Pierres
Rosemary was a good friend of Robin Miller and often helped her with her vaccine flights. She was the state president of the Australian Women Pilots Association and then went on to be the Federal President. She and Robin Miller flew in the Powder Puff Derby and came 6th out of 108.
Read more here.
Brownie (Marion) Wright
(nee Lunn)
In 1934 Brownie was the first Australian woman pilot to go night flying. There were no marked runways with lights, just kerosene flares made out of tin cans full of burning rags. In 1938 she was part of a Tiger Moth Formation Team of three, which flew cross country to a destination of 1000 kilometres. This was before radios so communication was done with hand signals. Brownie was a regular at St Osmond Golf Club in Adelaide until she retired.
Read more here.
Cathy Salvair
Cathy has flown tour groups around Australia. She has endorsements in aerobatics, formation flying and float planes.
Read more here.
Senja Robey
A foundation member of the Australian Women Pilots Association Senja learned to fly in a Tiger Moth in 1949. She has taught hundreds of students to fly and ferried many aircraft to new owners. She was much requested by photographers for aerial shots.
Patricia Toole
(nee Graham)
Pat was the first female to hold a commercial pilot’s licence in Papua New Guinea, a particularly difficult place to fly. Her licence had lapsed when in her seventies she decided to renew it. Her first solo flight was to take her 11 year old grandson on a joy flight.
Read more here.
NO NAME
-
NO NAME
-
Nan Manthorpe
-
Ellen Warren
Ellen was a staunch member of the Tasmanian branch executive of the Australian Women Pilots Association, and celebrated her 70th birthday in 1994 by flying a 172 on Saturday and the Blanik glider on Sunday. She had a night flying rating.
Read more here.
NO NAME
-
NO NAME
-
Dale Roger Jones
Dale made her first flight in Alice Springs and went on to fly with other pioneering women, both barnstormers and commercial pilots. She helped co-ordinate the making of the “Australian Pioneer Aviatrix” tapestry.
Read more here.
Heather Innes
Heather operates her own charter company on the north-west coast of Tasmania. Her work ranges from counting seal colonies to surveying national parks for fires. Heather is a retired detective inspector of police. Aerial drug spotting and search and rescue operations enabled Heather to combine police work with flying.
Shirley Adkins
Active in aviation as an administrator and competitor, Shirley Adkins is the first woman to be awarded the Oswald Watt Medal, Australia’s highest aviation award. She has also won more than 40 trophies from local, national and Australian Women Pilots Association flying competitions.
Read more here.
Aminta Hennessy
In 1978 Aminta Hennessy became the first Australian woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in a single-engine aircraft. She is also the first woman to complete solo back-to-back flights across the Pacific.
Mitzi Farr
Mitzi Farr was born in 1908, the same year the Wright brothers made a record flight. She had strong opposition from her family but gained her licence on a Gypsy Moth in 1931. In 1988 Mitzi passed a biennial flight review in time to fly on her 80th birthday.
Read more here.
Christine Davy
Christine Davy’s aviation career has left her with memories of flying outback mail runs, dropping emergency supplies during floods and evacuating people from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy. She worked for Connair in Alice Springs and in 1974 became Australia’s first woman captain of a passenger airliner.
Mary O’Brien
Mary was the first woman to captain a Lear Jet in Australia and the first woman examiner with the Commonwealth Department of Civil Aviation. She has worked as a lecturer in Aviation Studies at the University of Western Sydney.
Joanne Mein
Flight lieutenant Joanne Mein is the first woman member of the Roulettes in the 30-year history of the Royal Australian Air Force’s formation aerobatics team.
Dr Dorothy Herbert
Dorothy Herbert worked for the Royal Flying Doctor Service for 20 years attending outback clinics and emergencies. She was a wireless operator in the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force during World War II.
Carol Dehn
Carol is a captain for Qantas Link based in Melbourne. She has won many Australian Women Pilots Association trophies. One of her most satisfying jobs has been flying for the Air Ambulance in Victoria.
Sister Anne Maree Jensen
Sister Anne Maree Jensen is a Catholic Sister who has been based at Longreach in Queensland for the last ten years. She learnt to fly in order to reach people throughout her vast parish, which covers 280 000 square kilometres in south-west Queensland. She is fondly known as ‘the flying nun’.
Jenny Houghton
Jenny operates her own balloon flights business in rural Victoria. In 1999 together with Ruth Wilson she represented Australia in the prestigious Gordon Bennett Cup, an international gas ballooning competition. They were the first all-female crew to compete.
Allana Arnot
In 1997 Allana Arnot became the first woman to circumnavigate Australia solo in a helicopter. She accomplished this after teaching herself how to walk and fly again following a plane crash during a search and rescue mission in 1990.
Read more here.
Mardi Gething
During World War II Mardi joined the Air Transport Auxiliary delivering different types of aircraft. The dangers were many. In the 1960’s she returned to Australia and became the first female gliding instructor in Australia. In 1963 she set the female altitude gliding record of over 13,000 feet.
Lores Bonney
Always known as Mrs Bonney, Lores was the first woman to fly solo between Australia and England. In 1933 she was the first woman to complete a round-Australia flight and the first woman to fly solo from Australia to South Africa.
