Nancy-Bird Walton

Nancy Bird Walton, AO, OBE, D.St.J. (16 October 1915 – 13 January 2009) was a pioneering female Australian aviator. After learning to fly at 17 in the 1930s, she was still a teenager when she operated an air ambulance service in outback NSW. It meant landing in paddocks and on unsealed roads. She was the first pupil of aviation great Charles Kingsford Smith when he founded a flying school in 1933. But she was so short she needed two cushions to see out of the cockpit and reach the foot pedals. The first woman to gain a commercial pilot's licence in Australia, she was named a Living National Treasure in 1997. Qantas named its first A380 super jumbo after Ms Walton.