Pioneers Through The Years

Despite being the first Australian female to receive her pilot’s licence, Bryant has sadly been largely forgotten by history. This is likely due to the fact that just seven short months after receiving her licence, Bryant was sadly killed in the tragic Greycliffe ferry accident of 1927 that claimed the lives of 40 Sydneysiders. At the time of her death, she was working towards also becoming the first female Australian pilot to receive a licence to fly with passengers. Nancy-Bird Walton ultimately became the first Aussie woman to receive such a licence. Little else is known of Bryant, due to her untimely death, though much of what we now know was discovered some 80 years after her death, when a collection of her family letters was recovered.

Nancy-Bird Walton 

Nancy-Bird Walton is undoubtedly a name you have heard before, and she is one of the most famous pioneers of women in aviation. Born in 1915 in the small NSW mid-north coast town of Kew to William and Fanny Bird, it seemed she was always destined to fly. Walton took her very first trial flight in Sydney in 1930, aged 16, which sparked her life-long passion for flying. She worked in a general store in Mount George, near Taree, in order to save enough money to purchase a jacket and flying helmet. In 1933, at 19 years old, Walton became the youngest woman in the British Empire to receive a pilot’s licence. She was among the first pupils at Sir Charles Kingsford Smith’s flying school at Mascot.

Shortly after, with a little help from her family, Walton purchased a de Havilland Gipsy Moth. Together with friend and fellow aviator Peggy McKillop, the two young women took off around the country, working at fairs and race meetings. In 1936, Walton took home the Ladies Trophy at the South Australian Centenary Air Race from Brisbane to Adelaide. In 1939, she married an Englishman she met while on a two-year world tour studying civil aviation, Charles Walton. He affectionately called her ‘Nancy-Bird’, a pet-name that then came to represent the legacy that is Nancy-Bird Walton. 

Mary Bell 

Mary Bell was a hugely influential woman in Australia’s aviation history. Not only was she the sixth woman in Australia to get her pilot’s licence, she was also the first female to qualify as a ground engineer. Moreover, she was a pioneer for women’s contributions to the RAAF during war times long before women were considered, as the founding leader of the Women’s Air Training Corps (WATC), and later the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF). 

Born in Launceston, Tasmania, in 1903, Bell first learnt to fly at the age of 24 in 1927. She earned her Grade ‘A’ private pilot’s licence that same year. At this time, she had already met and married John Bell – a RAAF officer and WWI veteran. By 1939, the two were living in Brisbane, where Bell first became leader of the 40 women-strong Women’s National Emergency Legion Air Wing, which was an early volunteer group that pledged to assist with aircraft maintenance during war times. This group later became the WATC – a female-driven volunteer organisation that provided support to the RAAF during WWII. The WATC grew to be a national organisation, with Bell as its Australian Commandant. When WWII broke, Bell and the WATC pushed the RAAF to allow women to aid in the war efforts for the first time in forming the WAAAF. Formally established on 25 March, the WAAAF was the first and largest uniformed women’s wartime service in the country, which grew to more than 18,000 members by 1944. 

Rosemary Arnold 

Rosemary Arnold became Australia’s first official female helicopter pilot in 1965, when she completed both her CPL-H and CPL-A, at the age of 33. In fact, at that time she was the first female with a commercial helicopter licence in all of the southern hemisphere. It would be another 12 years until another female earned her commercial helicopter licence in Australia. She was named as Whirly Girl No.99 – a helicopter association equivalent to the Ninety-Nines. 

Arnold opened her own air charter company in 1976, serving as chief pilot with commercial fixed-wing, rotary-wing, land, sea, piston, gas-turbine and aerobic qualifications. She also travelled all throughout Australia in order to raise money for a range of causes, including hospitals, the disabled, and underprivileged children. She later went on to pen a book about Australia’s female aviation pioneers, called First Females Above Australia. In her 70s, she decided to get a degree, and completed a Bachelor of Aviation at the University of Western Sydney. Now in her 80s, she continues to be an avid supporter and promoter of women succeeding in aviation. She is also an accredited marriage celebrant, and performs ‘helicopter weddings’ above Sydney Harbour.

Robyn Clay-Williams 

Robyn Clay-Williams was another influential female aviator who went into the industry geared up and ready to fight against gender disparities, and ultimately became one of the first two women pilots in the Royal Australian Air Force. From childhood, Clay-Williams knew she wanted to fly, and joined the RAAF out of school in 1979. She initially sought after a pilot traineeship with the RAAF, however was rejected, as at the time, women were not permitted to be pilots in the air force.

Nevertheless, she joined the RAAF and underwent training in electrical engineering. Clay-Williams was trained as a radio engineer at the Engineer Cadet Squadron, and graduated in 1982. However, she never let her dream of being a pilot go. As soon as the restriction against female pilots was lifted, she immediately underwent her pilot training. She completed her training in 1988, and achieved the highest marks of any of the course’s participants. Her achievement won her the De Havilland Australia Trophy for being dux of her course. Clay-Williams then became a test pilot in 1993. She reached the rank of Wing Commander and led No. 85 Wing. After leaving the RAAF in 2003, she went on to complete a doctorate, and remains an academic to this day.

Sharelle Quinn 

Sharelle Quinn was among the first of Qantas’ female pilots, joining the ranks in 1985, following the landmark win of Deborah Lawrie, who fought for women’s right to fly for commercial airlines. Within just eight years, Quinn had risen through the ranks, becoming Australia’s first female Qantas captain in 1992. Like many women who have graced this list, Quinn knew from the time that she was a child that she wanted to fly through the skies. Though of course, at the time, there were little in the way of role models for young girls who dreamed of being pilots. Instead, Quinn took the usual road, finished high school and headed off to university. She made it halfway through that degree before she knew she could no longer ignore her childhood dreams.

At the age of 21, Quinn took up flight training, to the dismay of her parents. Without financial support, she took a job working in a factory to pay off the cost of her training. After finishing her training, she went on to study as a flight instructor, and took a job instructing in the Northern Territory. She was 24 years old when she saw the job listing for Qantas pilots. It wasn’t until she got the job that she realised she was now among the first of two women pilots working for the airline. Just last year, Quinn was in command of Qantas’ last Boeing 747 during its farewell ceremony.

Linda Corbould 

Linda Corbould was the first woman to command a RAAF flying squadron, and commanded No. 36 Squadron from 2006 to 2008. Corbould was born in Tasmania in 1963, and joined the RAAF as a fresh high school graduate at the age of 18. Corbould knew straight away that she wanted to be a pilot, however at that time women were still barred from being RAAF pilots. She worked as an air traffic controller within the RAAF until 1990, when she was then able to complete her pilot training. 

Corbould was the third female member of the RAAF to complete her pilot training, and was posted to No. 36 Squadron to fly C-130 Hercules. She served as deputy commander of the C-130 Hercules detachment that formed part of the Australian contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Corbould was later awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for planning and commanding a flight into Baghdad in 2003. In 2006, Corbould oversaw the RAAF’s program to accept the C-17 Globemaster III strategic transport aircraft into service as Wing Commander. In November that same year, she assumed command of No. 36 Squadron. The next woman to lead a RAAF flying squadron assumed command of No. 33 Squadron in December 2018.

Georgina Sutton 

South Australia-born Georgina Sutton has over 36 years of experience in the aviation industry, and went on to become the first female to be appointed as chief pilot of a major Australian airline for Jetstar in 2015. Sutton first trained as a police officer with the South Australia Police, before undergoing her pilot training and taking a role as an instructor, charter and RPT pilot out of Port Augusta. In 1989, Sutton got the life-changing call that she had been offered a job as a second officer at Qantas, aboard its newly welcomed Boeing 747- 400s. She moved to Sydney to take on the role. 

Over the next three decades, she moved up the ranks. By 2001, she was ranked as Captain on the Boeing 767. She took on additional responsibilities as an air safety investigator, and in 2013, she was named Fleet Captain of the Boeing 767 for Qantas. Just two years later, she was appointed as chief pilot and head of flying operations for Jetstar Australia and New Zealand, making her the first female to rise to such a role in a major Australian airline. “I think the women pilots within Qantas are very thrilled that I’ve been appointed to this role,” Sutton said. “I think it is also a very positive position for me to be in to act as a role model for them. It is something they can aspire to.”

Merren McArthur 

Merren McArthur spent 12 years working her way through the corporate ranks at Virgin Australia, after joining the company as general counsel in May 2008. She ultimately found herself swiftly moving through to the top ranks, securing the title of chief executive of Virgin Australia Regional Airlines in April 2013, and a simultaneous role of CEO of Virgin Australia Cargo just a year later. Four years later, in 2018, McArthur was appointed as chief executive of Tigerair Australia. She also served as acting chief commercial officer for Virgin Australia. 

Upon taking on her new role heading up Tigerair, Melbourne-born McArthur was vocal about her intentions to target the significant gender disparity in the airline industry. Under her leadership, Tigerair Australia became the Australian airline with the highest proportion of female employees, and boasted a proportion of female pilots nearly double the international average. She also overhauled what was previously an all-male management team into one that is 40 per cent female. “I didn’t set myself a target for that, I just did it naturally by looking at the pool of talent around me and promoting the right people into the right roles,” she said of her achievement. However, McArthur continued to lobby for more women in the industry, arguing that there needs to be a stronger pipeline for younger girls, to not deter them from the industry simply due to the sheer extent of the gender imbalance.