Following Amelia

It was early morning and their Lockheed L-10E Electra had covered some 2160nm (4000km) since a midnight departure from Lae, New Guinea. They were desperately trying to locate Howland Island – at just over two km long and one km wide, it was a speck in the vast Pacific. The US Coast Guard cutter Itasca was in the area and received Earhart’s last radio messages, “We must be on you, but cannot see you. Gas is running low. ” Earhart and Noonen were unable to hear Itasca responding to their calls. Nor did they see the ship’s smoke signal. Earhart vanished into legend.

Fifty years later, in a parallel universe, Gaby Kennard had both private and commercial pilot licences, but wasn’t really motivated to do anything with them. Then her husband left her for someone else. Kennard was shattered, yet incredibly liberated.

“I had to look deeply inward, and ask myself, ‘What do I want from life…what do I want to do that’s absolutely for me, that’s about being true to myself?’ ” Kennard was on a brief visit to the US when Australian pioneer aviator Jim Hazelton invited her to accompany him flying a twin engined Aerostar from the US to Australia. She jumped at the offer.

Was it this hop across the Pacific that made Kennard decide to recreate Earhart’s flight? “No, but something really weird did occur,” Gaby recalls, with lingering curiosity. “It was very strange. Jim and I were flying across the Pacific, a few hundred kilometres southwest of Hawaii, when I had a sudden colour image of Amelia Earhart – I could see her – it was a vision, almost. I asked Jim if we were in the area where she had disappeared and he said, ‘Yes’. ” As a 23 year old, Amelia Earhart had taken her first flying lesson in 1921. Within six months she had saved enough to buy her first aeroplane, a two-seat canaryyellow Kinner Airster biplane. Earhart promptly set her first women’s flying record by climbing to 14,000ft. Many other records would follow, including being the first woman to fly the Atlantic in 1928. She repeated the crossing in 1932, flying solo.

Strong north winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems plagued the 1932 flight and forced a landing in a farmer’s field in Londonderry, Ireland. The US Congress awarded Earhart the Distinguished Flying Cross – the first time it was awarded to a woman.

Earhart’s courage as a flier was outstanding.

Yet she was never cavalier. In a letter to her husband written before she set off on her 1937 flight, she said, “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards … I want to do this … Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others. ” Gaby Kennard took up that challenge andbecame the first Australian woman to fly solo around the world in 1989; she dedicated her flight to Amelia Earhart. Kennard had wanted to fly since she was a child, and finally undertook her first lessons in her early 30s.

“I didn’t get my licence until I was 33 years old … As a kid I would jump off fences flapping my arms … It was a constant, all my life – my wanting to fly. I didn’t know it then, but Dad was a pilot.

He died in a plane crash, shortly after I was conceived. I didn’t learn about him until my teens, and it made sense to me then, that I had always wanted to fly. I certainly felt really close to him while I was learning. ” With her pilot’s licence under her belt Kennard then spent a year planning her solo round-the-world flight, utterly driven.

“I had no money,” she says, “only about $2000 in the bank. ” Being Gaby, she didn’t let lack of funds or being a single parent hold her back. She mortgaged her house, arranged a carer for her two children and bought a Piper Saratoga.

So what did Gaby’s children think of her proposed Big Adventure and the associated risks? “It was a huge thing to decide to do it. My kids were still young – aged 16 and six. I wanted to show them that they can do anything, that they don’t have to put their lives on hold waiting for the right moment.

In fact the kids were totally behind me, they were really impressed. ” Kennard’s strength of purpose and will were called on early in her epic flight.

Strong headwinds meant that she ran low on fuel after leaving the Marshall Islands (oddly, in the vicinity of where Amelia Earhart went down). Kennard was forced to land at the US military base on Johnston Island where she got a cool reception, although they did have the much needed avgas to assist her on to Honolulu.

Later, between Hawaii and the US mainland, she faced her most harrowing experience when her engine kept cutting out. Gaby thought that her number was up.

But did she also think that Amelia was sitting at her shoulder, helping her through? “Yes. I did. But it was still terrifying. The engine cut out five times. The auxiliary fuel switch was not selecting the tanks. I tried over and over, and each time the engine cut out. I had to force myself to stop panicking and think. It would have been easier to let it stall and dive. But my kids’ faces flashed before my eyes. Eventually I was able to get the right switching sequence. I was a wreck for a week afterwards, and I was very scared at my next takeoff, leaving California. ” Shaken but undaunted, Kennard flew on alone, across the USA and across the top of South America, over the Atlantic, North Africa and the Mediterranean, through the Middle East, across India, through Asia and on home to Australia. She had planned to be away for six weeks. When she touched down at Bankstown, she had flown 29,000nm (53,740km) in 99 days. She had completed the flight attempted by Earhart 50 some years earlier – completely solo.

In the epilogue of her book, Solo Woman, Kennard reflects on courage. “It derives from the French ‘coeur’, meaning heart,” she writes.

“To me it means meeting danger with love, not with fear. ” Kennard ends her book with a quote from Earhart. It reads, in part: Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not, knows no release. . .

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy can hear The sound of wings.

And what price did Gaby Kennard pay? “It was all really, really hard – the preparation, the actual journey and the aftermath.

That was the most difficult part of the whole experience – the aftermath. ” Kennard was unprepared for the intense media interest and the ongoing hype. “Everybody wanted a piece of me. ” So much so, that Kennard and her children, reunited with Gaby’s husband Neville, left Australia for the US. Intending to stay in Colorado for one year “until the razzamatazz died down” they were away 12 years.

Now back in Australia, they are happily settled on 14 hectares near Mittagong in NSW, where Gaby is a recreational flyer, and an occasional motivational speaker.

These days she takes to the sky infrequently in Matilda, her Maule 260. She loves the plane but “reluctantly” has it on the market.

Gaby is reinventing herself yet again – this time as a fine arts student. “I’ve had a bee in my bonnet from way back, even decades ago when I was a nurse. ” She had dabbled in watercolour painting and done many workshops over the years. “Now I’m getting serious. ” As a full time student, Gaby finds the schedule at the Sydney National Arts School can be gruelling. No prizes though for guessing that she will see it through, enjoy it and emerge with flying colours.

“The engine cut out five times. The auxiliary fuel switch was not selecting the tanks. I tried over and over, and each time the engine cut out. ”