One woman's story of being a pilot

My sister Hanna and I grew up spending many afternoons after school at the airport while we waited for Dad to finish work. I have extremely fond memories of playing with old nuts and bolts and other weird aeroplane bits around the hangar, riding my bicycle around on the tarmac as fast as I could go, waving at the pilots, and going for “bombs around the block” in the plane with Dad, me in my booster seat. Sometimes we’d fly with Dad to Frogs Hollow for their Sunday morning meet-ups. More fond memories of buzzing the runway to scare off the cows before we could land, then coming in to land only to discover that cow patties actually have a great ability to spray up the side - and through the door seals - of the plane, but it was great just being able to listen to all the old pilots’ stories and watch all the different planes come in. I had a pretty great childhood.

I went to Merimbula Primary School, Eden Marine High School, then the University of Wollongong. In between High school and University I was a Rotary Exchange Student, hosted by the Pambula Rotary Club, and went to live and study in Hokkaido Japan. That was definitely a life-changer. Throughout my education, I was always attracted to English, Arts and Languages. I never really took to Maths or Science or anything that you traditionally would expect from a pilot. In fact, I did no Science subjects for Year 12, and I really wanted to drop Maths, but Mum said “absolutely not!”, and of course she was right to say so.

I always wanted to learn to fly, but was encouraged to pursue university, and at the time I didn’t really see flying as a career path. I was instead aiming for a career path in Foreign Affairs, Defence, or National Security. Though I do also remember wanting to be an air hostess when I was a lot younger, “because that’s what the girls do, right?”. Anyway, any time I brought up wanting to learn to fly throughout school, Dad would tell me not to bother because there’s not much money in General Aviation - which is true! Funny how parents are right about most things.

In 2014 I graduated from University with degrees in Arts and International Studies, Majors in Japanese and Chinese, and a Minor in Asia-Pacific Studies. I absolutely don’t regret going to University and learning self-discipline, how to study and do exams and all those fun things. But at the end of my penultimate year, I was living in a place almost directly under the flight path of the Illawarra Regional Airport, watching the planes going over and wishing I could do that too. I went to airshows, I’d watch the red Boeing Stearman biplane do aerobatics over the Harbour, and the vintage Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) airplanes fly in formation on special occasions. I came to the realisation that I should just give it a go, even if I just tried it as a hobby. So I called Dad up and told him I was serious, and once he realised I really was serious, he offered to put me in touch with my very first instructor.

My first lesson was in December 2013. I went solo for the first time around Easter, and by the time I graduated University at the end of 2014 I had my Recreational Pilot Certificate. I think the true turning point for my dedication to becoming a career pilot was when my instructor and I sat down for one of our regular coffee and debrief sessions in the terminal, where he told me he thought that I should seriously consider pursuing flying as a career. I don’t know what clicked in my head, but certainly having someone telling me so directly that I was capable of pursuing something that I thought was so unreachable really made me realise that, yes, I can absolutely give this a shot.

So that’s when the ball really started rolling. I moved back to Merimbula in early 2015 to work at Merimbula Aircraft Maintenance while I continued my flight training. I flew anything that I could; planes that needed a test run, planes that needed warming up for an oil change, planes that needed ferrying for maintenance - I took advantage of any minute I could to add to my logbook. Some of the more memorable jobs involved flying planes with brand new engines in them and hoping Dad remembered to rig them up correctly, or getting into planes I wasn’t familiar with whatsoever for the first time and having no clue how I was supposed to fly it (Dad would just tell me to fly it like any other plane - give or take). The opportunities I had ferrying aircraft were quite unique, as by the time I started my first flying job, I had over 15 different types of aircraft in my logbook, which is somewhat unusual for someone just starting out. I’ll always be very grateful for that advantage.

With learning how to fly, there are minimum hours, exams, and other requirements you need to achieve in order to take the next step. So in 2016 I sat my Private Pilot Licence exam and flight test, then I got straight into studying for my Commercial Pilot Licence. I kept building my hours by flying friends around or taking my family places. We did a family trip to Wagga, I flew my grandparents up to Yamba, flew people for birthday gifts; I took any excuse to fly. I sat and passed my Commercial Flight test in May 2017 and suddenly the world was my oyster. I was then very fortunate when another of my flight instructors put in a good word for me to an outback scenic and charter flight company in South Australia that he used to instruct for, Wrightsair, who are one of the best first-job options out there. I thought I had missed their intake for the season but in late July I got a call from the owner, Trevor, with a job offer! That was exciting.

I hopped on a flight from Canberra to Adelaide, then got on a mining FIFO flight to Prominent Hill mine, where one of the Wrightsair pilots was waiting to pick me up and take me to William Creek, about another 40 minute flight away. For those unfamiliar, William Creek is about 160km East of Coober Pedy, on the Oodnadatta Track. I still so vividly remember my first impressions that day - before that, I had never ever been to the Outback. I think the furthest West I had been was Dubbo (and I thought that was flat and red!). Well, when I was on that FIFO jet out of Adelaide it was a cloudy, overcast day. We took off before dawn and I couldn’t see any of the landscape out the window. I just remember looking out as we descended, popping out below the clouds to see just red desert as far as the eye could see. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t see any roads, buildings, trees, no signs of life. No runway, no airport - I didn’t even know where we even landing! But we touched down and it felt surreal. Then the flight to William Creek was even more surreal, only spotting the half-a-dozen buildings when we were almost overhead the town. I could talk forever about my experience out there but I’ll just say that it was great, it was challenging, rewarding, frustrating, amazing, and everything in between. It certainly made me grow as a pilot.

Up until my first flying job I hadn’t encountered too many issues being a girl pilot. I’ve accumulated a few good stories now though. Like the time I flew myself into Canberra alone for my sister Hanna’s graduation, and these old guys in another plane did a double take when they realised I was putting the cover on and no-one else was getting out of the plane. Or when I flew up to Lake Macquarie the next day to pick up my boyfriend from some of his flight training; it was right after Hanna’s graduation ceremony, so I was still dressed up in my makeup and high heels, and as I taxied the plane in and climbed out, Pete collecting his bags to meet me, his classmates just looked over at the plane and me slightly confused, almost. There’s nothing particularly wrong with these things, to be honest - a lot of what I get is just an extra stare, a few extra seconds where you can hear the gears grinding while people figure out “There’s a plane… with a female… but there’s no male around… so where’s the pilot then… oh, well she must be the pilot”. But it is understandable when I’m part of a still very small demographic. At the moment, only around 3 per cent of all pilots globally are women. It is very slowly growing and has a long way to go.

So I spent the first month in William Creek getting to know the area and the procedures and how the place was run. I got checked to line in a couple of the planes and started to fly my very own passengers around Lake Eyre which was an amazing experience already. One day in early September, Trevor pulled me aside and told me he needed me to go down to Wilpena Pound, in the Flinders Ranges, and be the new Senior Base Pilot down there. So off I went, and I was based out of Wilpena Pound for around 5 months. In this time I ticked over to 500 hours and I was starting to see more and more of SA with the number of charters and other jobs that I was beginning to fly. I had businessmen from Hong Kong coming to look at buying land, spotted quolls needing VIP transport between sanctuaries, PhD students doing aerial tracking for Dingoes, and I landed on all sorts of runways - dodging shrubs, cows, dogs, and even a flock of emus one time.

In early 2018, I was sent to Kangaroo Island to attempt to start a new remote base, so I lived there for maybe 2 months. This is also about the time that I became the runabout of the company - the previous season’s pilots had left so all of a sudden I was one of the senior pilots. And now the only girl pilot. I was trained up on aerial baiting, a disgusting but necessary job to target and control feral dogs, cats, and fox populations around South Australia and the Dog Fence. I ended up managing pretty much all the baiting contracts for 2018 and I was very relieved when I landed off my last smelly run for the year. I also got involved with the test flying for aerial fruit fly control, some brand new kind of technology where they grow and sterilise fruit flies in a lab, we drop them out of the plane over targeted areas, and basically the idea is to eventually breed them all out. I also ended up helping train new pilots coming in on what to expect, how to fly the scenic routes and what to talk about. In late 2018 there was a whole stream of professional photographers who came through for aerial photo workshops - that was freezing cold because we had to fly with the door off - and I was also tasked with the pretty big job of pulling off the inaugural William Creek Outback Fly-In, along with Christina who ran the office side of things, so together we managed to put together an entire long-weekend Fly-In and it actually went really well.

I had moved permanently back to William Creek around Easter 2018, bringing the population up to about 10 in total. I had to get used to living in the Pilot share house with 6 others, rationing my food and water with the closest supermarket being a 2 hour drive away along the Oodnadatta Track in Coober Pedy - we couldn’t drink the water in town because it was all bore water that stained our clothes brown and destroyed the showerheads (not to mention my skin and hair).

One of my favourite memories was doing the 2018 Speed Week on Lake Gairdner, Australia’s third-largest salt lake. The Dry Lake Racers Association host these land speed record weeks every year, with competitors from all over the world coming for our high quality salt lakes. We got approval to do scenic flights there, actually taking off and landing on the salt bed itself. That was an amazing experience to use a salt lake as a runway. We were pretty isolated out there for the whole week of the event, with no power, water, or phone reception - we slept in swags and only had enough water for a minute or two in the portable shower, plus we had to calculate our fuel carefully because we could only refuel by flying across to a nearby homestead, Mt Ive, where we had half a dozen 44-gal drums of Avgas and a very temperamental hand-pump. I did have to fly back to Port Augusta once in the middle of the week for an unofficial Medivac when one of the competitor’s teammates developed gallstones and was in pretty bad pain. On the way to Port Augusta, I didn’t get phone range until about 20 minutes out, after which I called 000 to organise an ambulance to meet us there. The lady on the other end of the line took a little while to realise what I was saying - she kept asking if I was the nurse and I had to reiterate that no, I was the one flying the plane as well as speaking to her because I had my phone connected to my Bluetooth headset. Anyway long story short, the ambulance met us, the guy went to hospital overnight with no serious issues, and he was back the next day. I like to think that maybe I can put that story in my resume for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

In dealing with customers every day for the scenic flights, which is the bread and butter of Wrightsair, I definitely had comments. Every day guaranteed. Again, most were just comments or reactions of surprise, because a lot of people just genuinely assume that the pilot will be male. Just the usual “Oh! You’re our pilot!”, or looking confused when I start to greet them and load them into the plane, or just little comments like “can you even see over the front?”, “are you sure you know how to fly this thing?”, “are you sure you know how much fuel you’ve put in?”, or just Mansplaining stuff - often completely off the mark, mind you. My favourites were when the men would act really macho in front of their wives and refuse to reschedule a flight on really windy and bumpy days, and then end up cowered down, gripping onto their wife’s leg, scared from the turbulence that I had just warned them about. The wives were always tougher.

I also have had many, many classic cases of plain old gendered assumption - when Dad came to visit me during Christmas, I took him along for a scenic flight one morning. He was wearing his usual casual clothes, just looking like a tourist. I was there in my uniform, holding the clipboard, but when the passengers turned up they just walked straight past me over to Dad, asking “oh, are you our pilot?”. There was another time that I was training up another of our pilots, Jacob, on aerial baiting and whilst he was off getting the plane to taxi it over, I was helping another man with refuelling his plane. When Jacob pulled up and got out, the man said “ah, here’s the pilot!”. Jacob, being the gem that he is, promptly corrected him and informed him that I was actually the one training him. I was very grateful for that.

At the Wrightsair Wilpena Pound base, it’s only a 2-pilot operation, and when I was there it was myself and a guy named Jason who I’m still good friends with too. It was actually an interesting time, because in the beginning, Jason wouldn’t quite believe me when I talked about the amount of comments and stuff that I would often experience. But after a month or so, he actually came up to me and said he never realised how bad it was, but since working together every day, he was able to see it happening every time. Like what happened with my Dad, one day Jason had come to the airstrip on his day off to bring me a coffee, again in totally casual clothes. To the average person you would perhaps think he was another passenger waiting for a flight. The actual passengers walked up, again with me in uniform with clipboard, saying “Hello, welcome!” - but as they rounded the corner their gaze left me and travelled to Jason who was sitting there in his Hawaiian shirt and sipping his coffee, and they exclaimed “Oh! You must be our pilot today!”.

Jason was great about it though, he’d really play it up and point out that I was the Senior Base Pilot, that I was “technically” his senior - even though the only real reason I was titled Senior was because I started a month earlier than he did. He actually had more hours than me at the time but that didn’t matter, he had my back, which was nice, and is also something I believe is really important for supporting women in the industry. Men are not the enemy, ignorance is - and the huge message out there at the moment is that feminism and supporting equality and balance in the world is not only a issue for women - it’s an issue for men too. So many of these stereotypes and presumptions need to be tackled by men, for men, to educate the next generation - and it doesn’t take much, even the smallest actions speak huge amounts. Just something seemingly small like correcting a passenger and saying things like “she’s actually my senior” and making a point of it, just like how Dad, Jacob, and Jason had all done, makes my day a whole lot better, and also hopefully encourages the person making the comment to think again before making an assumption next time.

One more story I want to share happened not so long before I came home. It was getting late in the afternoon and I was minding the phone in the office at William Creek. I got a call from a gentleman who was asking about getting an aircraft out to pick him up from a remote homestead up in the Simpson Desert, but he wanted to be picked up right then - turns out he was a pilot too, flying his ultralight along with two other friends in planes around the country, but not too long after taking off from Mt Dare Homestead up on the NT border, he had an engine failure which forced him to land in the middle of the desert. Luckily his friends were able to raise the alarm and a ringer from another nearby homestead drove the 2-3 hours out along the dunes to the coordinates to pick him up and take him back to the homestead, where they then called us. So anyway - I told him no worries, I would sort something out and someone would be out there ASAP. It turned out that everyone else was busy, so I went ahead and got a plane ready as quickly as possible to try and beat the setting sun - it was about 1.5 hours each way. So off I went - I managed to find the homestead and land on the strip which had obviously not been used in a while, with shrubs and potholes and big sand patches. But I pulled up, got out, and said “Hi, I’m Laura, we spoke on the phone” to which he replied, “OH - - You’re the one I was speaking to?! I just thought you were the receptionist!” But he was certainly glad to see me. I took him back to William Creek where we arrived just before dark, with his friends waiting at the pub with a beer ready for him (and one for me!). They were pretty impressed that their mate got saved by a young girl pilot. I bet they didn’t expect their day to turn out that way.

See also 'Gender balance a key theme'

I’m running out of time but I just want to touch on the whole ‘balance’ theme of this year’s International Women’s Day. There is still a lot of work to do on gender balance, but we are making progress. Think about our society even 10 years ago - so much has changed, and with the rise of social media there are so many more platforms now for people to have discussions, call out people for their unacceptable comments and behaviours, and while unfortunately it’s also home to a lot of negativity, I think just having more opportunities for education and discussion means a lot. I’m on a few women’s aviation pages where female pilots from all over the world can safely share stories, give advice, and ask questions about working in a male-dominated industry. Some of the things I’ve read there are amazing and also horrifying but again, for the most part, there is progress.

I strongly and deeply believe that education is key to equalling the balance between genders. Education and acceptance from a young age will shape the future generations. Going back to my childhood thoughts of being an air hostess because “that’s what the girls do” - it’s never because my family or anyone ever directly told me I couldn’t, but because of all the societal ‘norms’ that are forced onto kids. Boys toys, girls toys, pink and blue, kitchens and garages - you know, the stuff that’s always subtly (or not so subtly) impressed on you throughout life. I could talk forever about this stuff but I just want people to think twice before assuming, or before telling a girl she can’t or shouldn’t do something just because of her gender. That red aerobatic plane that I used to watch fly above the harbour in Wollongong, I actually went for a joy flight in that for my 21st birthday, before I was flying. I vividly remember, as we were taxiing out to the runway, saying “I wish I could learn to fly!” and the pilot replied, “Well why can’t you, anyone can!”. But without even thinking, without even hesitating, I said “Ah, I’m just not smart enough”.

And that’s the problem, girls are consistently taught by society, from birth, to think that those kind of jobs aren’t for them. If you don’t excel at Math or Science, you can forget ever doing something like flying a plane. If you do manage to break through and become a pilot, people think it’s easy because hey, you’re a girl, the airlines or the Defence Force or whoever are trying to fill quotas so you’ll get a job, no worries! It’s definitely not like that. Often, as a woman you feel like you have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition as a man. And we are certainly held to the same standards, if not higher, in order to prove ourselves worthy.

Trust me, if I wanted an easy career path, I would certainly not be a pilot! It has cost a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of sacrifice. Any money I’ve earned as a pilot so far has gone straight back into my training - I’ve gone through my turbine engine, multi engine and instrument endorsements, and I’ve almost finished my Master of Aviation Management. I worked for Wrightsair for 14 months, reaching over 1000 flying hours, and I now work back on the coast in Moruya, flying a larger turboprop plane for Skydive Oz. I’ve just been asked to fly for a few weeks at a dropzone in Jurien Bay WA too, which will be really interesting. I’m also working towards my next level of flight licensing so that I can keep working towards my end career goal, which is flying for the RFDS. It is a lot of hard work with no shortcuts - that goal of flying for the RFDS means that, even with where I am now, I need at least 3 more years of training and experience before I can even consider applying. But I wouldn’t swap this path for anything. My time in the Outback was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and my time flying skydivers will be the same, with so many life lessons learned. I love learning, I love the achievements I’ve had, I love looking back on everything I’ve done already and knowing that I have so much more yet to look forward to. I’m so excited for the future and I can’t imagine life any other way.

So that’s me done. I’ve had a very lucky journey so far with a lot of support and positivity, from strong and inspiring women and men, but there are still so many women and girls out there who are facing the daily struggle of trying to be taken seriously or treated equally in a largely male-dominated society. There is absolutely no doubt that we need to keep working hard to find that perfect balance, because it is something that will simply make our society and our world a better place for everyone.