Long before passengers settled into comfortable airline seats and aircraft crossed Australia every few minutes, flying was an adventure.
Airfields were often little more than grass paddocks.
Navigation could involve maps, landmarks and a very good sense of direction.
Aircraft were small, noisy and exposed to the weather.
And in the 1930s, the cockpit was generally considered a man’s place.
Nancy Bird had other ideas.
As a teenager, she learned to fly under one of Australia’s most famous aviators, Charles Kingsford Smith.
Within a few years she was flying her own aircraft across country towns, carrying passengers and transporting nurses into remote areas of New South Wales.
She would become one of Australia’s great aviation pioneers and spend much of her long life encouraging other women to take to the skies.
A Girl Fascinated by Flying
Nancy Bird was born in Kew, New South Wales, on 16 October 1915.
Her fascination with aviation began when flying itself was still relatively new.
Australia had quickly embraced aircraft because they offered something particularly valuable in a country this large.
Distance suddenly became easier to conquer.
Mail could travel faster.
Remote towns could be connected.
Doctors and nurses could reach patients.
And people could cross distances that previously required long journeys by road or rail.
For a young Nancy, however, there was another attraction.
Flying simply looked exciting.
And she wanted to do it herself.
Learning to Fly With Kingsford Smith
Nancy was only 17 when she began flying lessons in Sydney in 1933.
Her instructor was not exactly an unknown local pilot.
It was Charles Kingsford Smith.
“Smithy” had already become one of Australia’s greatest aviation heroes after completing pioneering long-distance flights, including the first trans-Pacific flight from the United States to Australia in 1928.
Nancy became one of his first pupils at the flying school he had established.
Imagine being 17 years old, climbing into an aircraft in the early 1930s and being taught to fly by Kingsford Smith.
Nancy apparently wasn’t intimidated by the idea.
She wanted to fly.
So she learned.
Buying Her Own Gipsy Moth
Learning to fly was one thing.
Making a living from it was another.
With help from her family, Nancy bought a de Havilland Gipsy Moth.
It was an open-cockpit biplane — a very different experience from flying a modern aircraft.
There was no sealed, climate-controlled cockpit.
The pilot sat out in the air.
The wind was part of the experience.
So was the noise.
And Nancy began taking her little aircraft around country Australia.
Barnstorming Across the Countryside
One way early pilots earned money was through barnstorming.
Pilots travelled from town to town, often appearing at agricultural shows, race meetings and community events.
People paid for joy flights.
For many country Australians, it might have been their first opportunity to leave the ground in an aeroplane.
Nancy joined that world.
She flew her Gipsy Moth around regional Australia offering passengers the chance to experience flight.
Today we might imagine aviation as timetables, security gates and baggage limits.
Barnstorming was rather different.
A little aeroplane landed near town.
People gathered around.
And if you were brave enough — and had the money — you climbed aboard.
For Nancy, it provided something even more important.
Flying experience.
Lots of it.
Becoming a Commercial Pilot
In 1935, Nancy obtained her commercial pilot’s licence.
She was still only 19.
At a time when relatively few women drove professionally, let alone flew aeroplanes for a living, Nancy had entered commercial aviation.
The National Museum of Australia describes her as the first woman to work in Australian commercial aviation and the first woman in the Commonwealth to carry passengers commercially.
But carrying joy-flight passengers was about to lead to something much more important.
Flying Nurses Into the Outback
Nancy met Reverend Stanley Drummond, founder of the Far West Children’s Health Scheme.
Drummond’s organisation worked to improve healthcare for children living in remote western New South Wales.
He needed someone who could fly nurses into isolated communities.
Nancy had an aeroplane.
She had a commercial licence.
And she was willing to go.
In 1935 she began flying nurses through western New South Wales using her own Gipsy Moth.
Her work took her through areas including Broken Hill, Ivanhoe, Menindee, White Cliffs and Wilcannia.
An Early Australian Air Ambulance
Nancy’s work with the Far West Children’s Health Scheme was an early form of aerial medical service.
The idea was beautifully practical.
Australia had enormous distances.
Medical workers needed to reach people scattered across those distances.
Aircraft could get them there.
It was the same basic problem that had inspired John Flynn and the Flying Doctor Service.
While the Flying Doctor was developing its medical aviation network elsewhere in Australia, Nancy was helping demonstrate how useful aircraft could be for healthcare in western New South Wales.
The aeroplane wasn’t merely an exciting new machine anymore.
It was becoming part of the infrastructure of outback life.
Flying Wasn’t Particularly Comfortable
It is easy to look at photographs of early aviators and romanticise the experience.
Leather helmet.
Goggles.
Scarf.
Little biplane against a beautiful Australian sky.
Very adventurous.
The reality could be considerably less glamorous.
Early aircraft were noisy.
Navigation was basic.
Weather could change quickly.
Landing grounds were rough.
Cockpits could be open to the elements.
Pilots had to understand their aircraft, read the landscape and make decisions without the technology available to modern aviation.
And if you were flying over remote Australia, there could be an awful lot of empty country underneath you.
Nancy wasn’t simply posing beside aeroplanes.
She was working in them.
Marriage Temporarily Grounded Her
In 1939 Nancy married Charles Walton.
At the time, expectations surrounding married women were very different from today.
Nancy stepped away from professional flying.
But she certainly did not step away from aviation.
The Second World War was beginning.
Australia would soon need every available pair of hands.
And Nancy found another way to contribute.
Women Take Their Place in Wartime Aviation
During the Second World War, Nancy became heavily involved with the Women’s Air Training Corps.
The organisation trained women in skills that could support Australia’s wartime aviation effort.
Women learned aircraft-engine maintenance, signalling, first aid and vehicle operation, among other roles.
Nancy served as the New South Wales Commandant and later Australian Commandant of the organisation.
The Women’s Air Training Corps helped demonstrate that women were ready and capable of taking a much larger role in Australia’s wartime aviation services.
Many members later joined the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force when it was formed.
Nancy’s pioneering work had moved beyond flying aircraft herself.
She was helping other women enter aviation too.
Australian Women Pilots Needed Their Own Organisation
After the war, Nancy continued advocating for women in aviation.
In 1950, she founded the Australian Women Pilots’ Association.
The organisation created a network for female pilots across the country.
Women could share experience, encourage new pilots and promote opportunities within aviation.
It may seem ordinary now for women to work as airline pilots, flight instructors, engineers and aviation professionals.
In Nancy’s early flying years, it was anything but ordinary.
Women like Nancy helped make it less unusual.
Flying Was a Lifelong Passion
Nancy never lost her connection with aviation.
Over the decades she remained a prominent figure in Australian flying circles and became a mentor and inspiration to younger pilots.
Her achievements were recognised with numerous honours.
But perhaps the greatest measure of her influence was the generations of women who followed her into Australian cockpits.
What had once been remarkable slowly became normal.
That is often how genuine social change happens.
Someone goes first.
Then somebody else follows.
Eventually people stop wondering whether it can be done.
Nancy Bird Became Nancy Bird Walton
Nancy became widely known as Nancy Bird Walton, combining the name associated with her aviation career with her married surname.
It was a name that became familiar throughout Australian aviation.
She lived through almost the entire transformation of modern flight.
When Nancy first learned to fly, Kingsford Smith’s great pioneering journeys were national news.
Commercial aviation was still developing.
Long-distance air travel remained an adventure.
By the later years of her life, Australians routinely boarded jet aircraft to cross the country in a few hours.
Nancy had watched aviation grow from fragile biplanes to the modern airline age.
And she had been part of that story almost from the beginning.
An A380 Named Nancy-Bird Walton
There could hardly be a more appropriate tribute.
In 2008, Qantas took delivery of its first Airbus A380.
The enormous double-deck passenger aircraft was named Nancy-Bird Walton.
Think about the contrast.
Nancy began flying an open-cockpit Gipsy Moth in the 1930s.
More than seven decades later, her name appeared on one of the largest passenger aircraft in the world.
From a tiny biplane carrying nurses across western New South Wales to an aircraft capable of carrying hundreds of passengers across the world.
Her name travelled a very long way.
Nancy’s Final Flight
Nancy Bird Walton died in Sydney on 13 January 2009, aged 93.
By then she had spent more than seven decades connected with Australian aviation.
She had been a student pilot.
A barnstormer.
A commercial pilot.
An outback medical pilot.
A wartime volunteer leader.
An advocate for women in aviation.
And a mentor to generations who followed.
The teenager who simply wanted to fly had become part of Australian aviation history.
More Than Australia’s Famous Woman Pilot
Nancy Bird Walton’s story matters for more than the novelty of a woman flying an aeroplane in the 1930s.
Her career intersected with some of the biggest changes occurring in Australia at the time.
Aviation was connecting isolated communities.
Aircraft were becoming tools of medicine and transport.
Women were challenging traditional expectations about the work they could perform.
And Australia’s enormous geography was encouraging people to find new ways of overcoming distance.
Nancy was part of all of those changes.
She didn’t simply fly over Australia.
Her career tells us something about the Australia she was flying over.
Why Nancy Bird Walton Still Matters
Pioneers are sometimes remembered because they set records.
Nancy certainly achieved plenty of firsts.
But records eventually get broken.
Her larger legacy was helping create opportunities that other people could follow.
When Nancy climbed into an aircraft as a teenager, women pilots were unusual enough to attract attention simply for being there.
Today Australian women fly airliners, helicopters, military aircraft, agricultural aircraft, rescue aircraft and just about everything else capable of leaving the ground.
Nancy didn’t accomplish that change alone.
No pioneer ever does.
But she helped push open a cockpit door that had previously been very difficult for women to enter.
And she spent much of the rest of her life making sure it stayed open.
Nancy Bird Walton – The Girl Who Looked Up
As a child, Nancy Bird looked at aeroplanes and wanted to fly them.
As a teenager, she learned from Charles Kingsford Smith.
At 19, she earned her commercial pilot’s licence.
Soon she was flying nurses into remote communities across western New South Wales.
Later she helped organise women for Australia’s wartime aviation effort and founded an organisation to support female pilots.
By the end of her life, aviation looked almost nothing like the world she had entered in 1933.
But perhaps that was part of Nancy Bird Walton’s achievement.
She belonged to a generation that showed Australians what aircraft could do.
Connect communities.
Carry medicine.
Cross enormous distances.
And provide opportunities that had once seemed impossible.
Nancy Bird Walton spent a lifetime looking towards the sky.
Then she helped make sure other Australian women could follow her there.
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