Ladies get their wings…
My grandparents had a farm on the outskirts of a town, unimaginatively called Bordertown in the equally unimaginatively named state of South Australia.
It is flat, rural and, depending on your point of view, relatively remote.....
At the time the town has population of about 800. It had two pubs, a post office and some shops…. and my grandmother owned one of the local hairdressing salons.
Many years later, when the population had nearly doubled, it became my birth place and the town where I was to grow up in. But my childhood is not the story I wish to tell you.
I wish to begin this story in 1971. My grandfather was already a pilot - not a commercial one, but he had his private pilot’s licence and would often tow the gliders up at the local airfield in his Cessna. He even build an airstrip on the farm……(basically it was a levelled of strip in a grass in a paddock behind the farmhouse which they didn't use for grazing or planting crops of course). And it was this year when my grandmother decided it was about time she was to get her pilot’s licence. Her plan was to use the proceeds from her hair dressing salon to pay for flying lessons. And that is exactly what she did.
By 1973 she had her licence and my grandfather decided he no longer wanted the Cessna. What he wanted was a Beechcraft Bonanza. The problem was that, in 1973, there was no where in Bordertown to buy one. In fact, being a USA manufactured aircraft, they was no where in Australia you could buy one, let alone Bordertown. Actually I don't believe they had arrived in the Southern Hemisphere yet.
Not one to let a little ocean stand in the way of things, grandpa purchased a couple of one way tickets on a commercial airline to Texas, where he promptly purchased the desired airplane and then informed my grandma they were going to fly it back home to the farm in Australia. Grandma took that unexpected change in plans in her stride and off they went.
Grown up, I never tired of listening to my grandparent’s tales of that epic adventure on their journey home…. flying over the arctic-circle, following an oil pipe line across Saudi Arabia and dodging the monsoons of Indonesia. I loved looking at the old discoloured photographs of her in a pair of yellow flairs climbing into the cockpit.
It was my grandfather's extreme confidence in his own abilities that fuelled the adventure - but my grandmother’s spirit has always held a special intrigue. Elegant, beautiful and always dressed in style, she must have stood out from the crowd and entirely ready for an adventure, party and a glass of champagne. And women pilot’s were a rarity even then. I can't help but think of the magnitude of what she achieved. Even today people look at me a bit surprised when I say I can fly. So what did it actually mean for her to obtain her licence nearly 50 years ago? Until the 1970s, the U.S. Air Force and Navy barred women from flying. Only in the 90's were they able to fly in combat missions.
My grandmother’s decision to obtain her pilots licence must have been quite unusual at the time. Quite forward thinking and liberal it was actually my great-grandmother who both suggested and encouraged it.
Since the beginning of aviation women began falling in love with flying and have wanted to be involved. …but their desire to become part of this was often met with resistance.
At the turn of the 20th Century women still didn’t have the right to vote. They were expected to have permission of their male relatives. Even Amelia Earhart, as an adult, had to ask permission her father in the 1920’s to learn to fly . Even with the accepted male permission to engage in their male dominated activity, women still had to over come the hurdle of finding an instructor willing to teach a woman. The most famous personalities in aviation have to be that of Wright Brother’s, but, disappointingly, they downright refused to teach females – wanting no part in their emancipation of women.
And yet even without these overt restrictions today – the number of female pilots is still incredibly low. It is estimated that globally the global number of female pilots amounts to only 6%, with Aviation Worldwide Week reporting the global number of women airline pilots is 3%.
My grandmother was lucky in that she had no such battles with those around her. My grandfather was extremely supportive as was the rest of her family. I admire her for her achievements but also the attitude of my ancestors in supporting her.
But the more I have read about the early days of aviation, the more fascinated I have become with our early pioneering aviators and even more in awe of our early aviatrixes. Not only were they brave and courageous, they had to break barriers of gender stereo-typing and male resistance - but what is cool is that they did this whilst all the while maintaining every aspect of their femininity, grace and elegance - my grandmother included.
I love the fact that these women have been able to retain and even emphasise the qualities that make them feminine to survive in a world dominated by men, oil and engines!
They all loved cloths, had their own fashion lines, cosmetic companies, and always ensured their faces were properly powdered!
Cosmetic companies and fashion designers even went so far as to sponsor them and as a result they did some rather awesome things. In 1933, cosmetic company, Outdoor Girl, sponsored Helen Richey and Frances Marsalis to attempt to break the female record to see how long they could hold an aircraft intheair, using inflight refuelling techniques. They lasted 10 days straight.
Come with me on a journey to explore the achievements of our pioneering aviators and aviatrixes whilst we travel the world in the footsteps of my grandmother.......
