Australia’s first woman Chief Flying Instructor (CFI), and first female CASA designated Pilot Examiner, has rekindled her spirit for flying on International Women’s Day.
Firsts are things that Mary Earnshaw seems to do with finesse, wiith over 10,500 flying hours in her logbooks she has a deep passion for all things aviation.
Mary, who now lives on the Sunshine Coast, was born in regional WA and pursued a flight career in her 20s.
She became a Grade 1 Flight Instructor at the Royal Aero Club in Perth in the 80s and continued up the ladder to become Australia’s first female Chief Flying Instructor.
“At the time it was a big honour,“ she said.
“I wasn’t suppose to be flying an aeroplane because women just didn’t do that. But I don’t think it made much of a difference to me. I would always get ’Oh, you’re the office girl. Where’s the pilot?’ and that was a good joke to me and I would say, ’I’m the pilot’. It was funny to see the look on people’s faces when they hopped in the plane.“
Mary said she was generally well accepted in the field as time went on.
“Women in aviation now is not as rare as it was 30 years back,“ she said.
“Today was just a look back in history for me. I’m still very proud of what I achieved.“
She has not been flying, teaching or examining for some time and Shawn Kelly of Paradise Seaplanes thought it was high time she received some recognition and enjoyed a seaplane adventure.
“It feels good that I still have the ability to relate to an aeroplane because that’s what it’s about when you’re a pilot, and the passion is still there, which is even more surprising because I haven’t done it for such a long time,“ she said.
Mary may claim she has flown “pretty much everything” in general aviation, but she hasn’t flown in Australia’s only Wilga 80 seaplane.
“It was a big adrenaline rush for me,“ Mary said.
“Initially there was a fair amount of nerves but I did the take off and once I got up in the air it all started to come back. It’s like riding a horse or riding a bike I think, you’re a bit wobbly but you soon get the idea.“
Pilot Shawn Kelly said, “Mary was a formidable force in aviation and responsible for many people realising their dreams to fly.“
On International Women’s Day, Mary encouraged young girls to follow their passion no matter how unique the career path.
“The world has become not so much a male and female world, it’s a more unified world,“ she said.
“But if a young girl or woman feels that they can’t do something because only boys can do it, I would say put your heart and soul into whatever you want to do.
“It might be a long road, but the reward is at the end when you achieve your goal.“
Mary said although there are still some career paths that are quite male dominated, women shouldn’t limit themselves.
“Women have achieved a lot over the years just to get equality, so I think it’s become more acceptable now that we are equal in what we can and can’t do,“ she said.
“I challenge a bloke to go and have a baby.
“I just take my hat off to anybody that gets off their backside and achieves something they want to achieve despite any hurdles or obstacles in their way.
“I certainly had a few of those, that was the attitude ’She must be really weird, she thinks she can fly an aeroplane’, well guess what, she did do it and proved them all wrong.
“International Women’s Day is just that, it’s a day that recognises the achievements of woman over the decades and where they’ve come from; from being the stay at home wife that has the babies, and the man that went out to work. “That’s history. It’s recognising where that’s come from to where it is today.“
Mary has just been asked to write a series of articles for Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and is excited about having the opportunity to share her enthusiasm and her stories with a nationwide audience.
“I’m going to be going to be concentrating on articles which focus around my passion which is general aviation and more specifically the flying training,“ she said.
