Flying for Health

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 53, 28 June 1940, Page 10

Flying for Health

AUSTRALIA'S best known woman flyer, little Nancy Bird, did epic work in piloting a clinic sister in Western New South Wales, for the Far West Children’s Health Scheme founded by another well-known Australian missionary, the Rev. S. G. Drummond, long before she was . twenty-one. Pretty, auburn-haired, Nancy decided at the age of fifteen that she would learn to fly and two years later took her instructional course with the late Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith in Sydney. She accomplished her first flight after 14 days’ tuition, a record performance for a woman at the Mascot aerodrome. She obtained her "A" licence in 1933,

but had to wait until she was nineteen, the age limit for a "B" licence, before she could commence operating as a commercial pilot. While " barnstorming" with a fellow girl flyer on a tour of New South Wales, Nancy was approached by the Rev, Drummond to pilot the clinic sister from the Bourke centre on her various rounds. This Health Scheme is doing wortiars for the outback children. . . For nearly a year, nineteen-year-old Nancy Bird flew the clinic sister at Bourke on her six-weekly tours of inspection. . . As you can imagine, the arrival of the flying clinic in these remote districts is an event, and mothers and childten dressed in their best often travel many miles to the nearest centre to obtain advice or treatment when the ’plane with the Clinic Sister descends. And Nancy’s Leopard Moth with its French-grey body and scarlet ‘trimmings played no small part in the interest of the Sister's visits -(From a talk by Miss Violet Roche ori the Air Medical Service in Australia, 1YA, June 17)