{"id":7405,"date":"2026-09-04T13:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T03:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/?p=7405"},"modified":"2026-09-04T13:08:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T03:08:51","slug":"nancy-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/women-who-built-the-future\/nancy-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"NANCY BIRD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nancy Bird dreamed of flying as she stared above as these veteran WWI pilots in fragile aircraft undertook aerobatic displays. Bird convinced her family to allow her to participate and as she was taken high into the clouds she was smitten. From fifteen her wages from working in her father\u2019s office and her spare time was spent immersed in this fascinating world of aviation, teaching herself new skills, reading anything she could get her hands on and being a pest at the airfield until she could afford her first flying lesson. This occurred in 1933 when she was 18. Was there something in the name because an abundance of natural ability meant she learnt quickly. The only obstacle being that women needed to wear dresses or skirts which proved an incumbrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wearing \u2018women\u2019s garb was a handicap. (Bird)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By 1935 Nancy Bird was the youngest woman in the British Empire to hold a commercial pilot\u2019s licence. That turned out to be the easy part. Being taken seriously and securing work wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Mascot everybody shook their heads and said, \u2018You can\u2019t do it, Nancy\u2019. There was no room for women in aviation \u2026 nobody in the world wanted to fly with a woman.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was upsetting watching less experienced men being given positions. For years she begged for financial support from anyone who stood still long enough and finally purchased her own aircraft. Bird accepted charter flights to outback stations, none were refused, just so she could fly and make ends meet. She married Charles Walton and when WWII arrived, she had 500 hours flying time and had set up and was Commandant of the Australian Women\u2019s Air Training Corps<\/em>. Bird contacted the Minister for Defence, Brigadier Geoffrey Street and offered her flight experience and those of the women she represented. Street informed Bird that there was \u2018no arrangements\u2019 made to accept any women pilots. In less than two years contact came from Women\u2019s Australian Auxiliary Air Force<\/em> (WAAAF) Commandant Clare Stevenson offering Bird a position in Melbourne. Bird lived in Sydney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My husband and his family all held the same views on the whereabouts of a married woman\u2019s place. Turning Clare Stevenson down was one of the hardest things I had had to do in my life.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1961 Nancy Bird-Walton lamented how little had changed for women pilots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The position is much the same \u2026 airlines don\u2019t want them. There are plenty of airlines that know the value of women pilots and would put them on willingly enough except for two things \u2013 the male pilots and the passengers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the resistance facing women like Nancy Bird-Walton was indicative of the exclusion of women in occupations related to the military in Australia, the inroads made by women within the workforce had influenced a new generation to believe. This was soon evidenced in their forthright demand to serve with their nation\u2019s armed forces. The battle took unprecedented national peril before the guardians were forced to concede.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BORN TO FLY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-women-who-built-the-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7408,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions\/7408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steampunk.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}