My God! What a Woman
13th January, 2009
The passing today of Nancy-Bird Walton ends one of our last links with the earliest days of Australian aviation, Leader of The Nationals and Shadow Transport Minister, Warren Truss, said today.Nancy-Bird Walton was an extraordinary pilot, adventurer, businesswoman and humanitarian, and the nation is poorer for her loss.
Taught to fly by the legendary Charles Kingsford-Smith, Nancy-Bird Walton created her own legend in becoming the youngest woman to gain a pilot’s licence, setting up a flying medical service into the far reaches of outback New South Wales, success in air races and training of other women pilots, and charity work. It was fitting that in 1997 she was named an Australian National Treasure.
She was a champion for Australia aviation and particularly Qantas. She had very strong views and gave no quarter as she forcefully but fairly put her views. She regarded as unthinkable that any Australian Government would allow competition to Qantas on any international routes – especially across the Pacific.
As a new Transport Minister, I attended her 90th birthday party at Sydney Airport. During a long and sharply riveting speech, she declared that there had never been a decent aviation minister in the history of Australia. I said to her later that it was a tough call as I’d only been in the job for two months.
I was delighted to be present when Qantas named its first A380 aircraft in her honour, and to fly with her on its naming flight. She was rightly very proud of the honour that Qantas had bestowed upon her. It is entirely appropriate that her name should adorn the biggest passenger aircraft flying the Australian flag.
Nancy-Bird Walton founded the Australian Women’s Pilots’ Association in 1950 and was its president and patroness for decades. She took great pride in seeing the success and acceptance of women in aviation.
Her autobiography was titled My God! It’s a Woman – the words of well-known grazier Charlie Russell who made the exclamation when he discovered that the pilot who had been chartered to rescue him from floodwaters on a marooned property in 1936 was female. Indeed it was a woman, and what a woman Nancy Bird Walton was.
I extend my commiserations to Mrs Walton’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and her many friends she made over her long life.
