We All Need Heroes - Nancy Bird Walton

We all need heroes, people who inspire us, people we aspire to be like, people we choose to model from. Put simply, if you want to achieve a result – find someone else that has done it and do what they do! Modelling is the basis of human learning – from birth we are masters at modelling. Replicating the behaviour of the people we are with is how we learn to walk and talk - in fact it is how we learn everything.

However in order to learn anything, the first and the most fundamental step is to know your outcome. Makes sense doesn’t it? Knowing where you are headed will certainly assist you to get there! The challenge is to not just know your outcome as a concept – but rather to know it as if it is already something you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. And this is where your heroes come in!

I grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne (Australia). Our house was right underneath the approach path for a local airport and on warm sunny days the planes would buzz in and out, coming and going to places that I could only imagine. As a young girl, I would watch them, listen to them, and feel what it would be like to be flying those planes. I used to wonder about the exotic adventures and I KNEW that when I grew up I would fly planes. I just KNEW I would! I could even almost smell the aviation fuel. I had a very clear outcome in mind and I knew I could be a pilot because Nancy Bird had already led the way. If she could do it, then I could do it too!!

Nancy Bird

Back in the 1930’s, the open cockpit of a Gypsy Moth gave the pilot a rush of exhilaration, the throaty thunder of a sabre-tooth tiger and the commanding view of Earth astronauts were yet to better.  Surrounded by these overwhelming distractions and using road maps to navigate, stopwatches and speedometers to ascertain distances and the horizon to level her wings, Nancy Bird learned to fly. What an amazing woman!

Nancy Bird is no less than a hero of Australian aviation and her story is one of succeeding against all odds.  You see, in the 1930’s it was expected that girls didn’t fly.  Not only did they not fly, they didn’t dream to fly, either metaphorically or in reality.  Well, it seems, not all girls felt that limitation…

At the age of 17, in pursuit of her dreams, Nancy became Charles Kingsford-Smith’s first ever student in the school he operated out of Mascot Airport.  She wowed her instructor with her flying aptitude, and became more addicted to her passion along the way. She broke all the common expectations binding women to their kitchens. She became an outback barnstorming pilot working the local fairs and selling joy-flights to make ends meet.  During this period, she also held the record for the fastest time between Melbourne and Adelaide – no doubt making many men uncomfortable in their cockpits.   

But Nancy Bird didn’t stop there! Her barnstorming life lasted a few years until, led by her abiding sense of humanity the next challenge presented itself and she became a frontier aviatrix flying for the Far West Children’s Health Scheme.  Nancy remembers her first flight for that organisation in her Leopold Moth when she flew a panic-stricken Sister Webb out to her distant post with her baby scales and clinical equipment. “I shall never forget how brave she was that day.  She loathed flying and certainly had no desire to go by air.”  The Far West Children’s Health Scheme was established to help outback mothers raising children in far flung settlements without even the most basic of medical care.  With no weather forecasting abilities, poor navigational equipment and runways dotted by rabbit warrens, Nancy safely flew her passengers with never a crash recorded against her. And she did that because her mind-set of providing distinction in the face of fear and nay-sayers drove her above and beyond.

Did I follow in the footsteps of Nancy Bird? You bet I did!  And flying is everything I dreamed of as that young girl in the suburbs of Melbourne, watching the sky in wonder as the planes flew overhead! I did it because women like Nancy Bird provided me with a model, so that my dreams could become reality.

So next time YOUR view is impeded by clouds of doubters and their thundering negativity strikes at your sense of purpose, think of the exhilaration you’ll feel upon flying with the eagles when you’ve overcome those sparrows. Whose footsteps are you following – and are they making your dreams a reality?