Nancy Bird Walton

Nancy Bird Walton was a qualified pilot by the age of 19. She was born in a little country town thirty miles north of Taree.

As a teenager during the Depression in Australia, Nancy Bird found herself in the same position as many other children of the time, leaving school at 13 to assist her family. At the age of 18, her passion drove her to take flying lessons.

Nancy Bird entered an air race from Adelaide to Brisbane, and won the Ladies' Trophy. She was the youngest commercial licensed woman pilot in the British Commonwealth to become Australia's "First Lady of aviation" in the 1970s.

She returned to Australia soon after  World War II broke out and she began training women in skills needed to back up the men flying in the Royal Australian Air Force. She was 24 when she married an English man, Charles Walton, and had two children.