By Mikayla van Loon
Having completed an ‘Australia in a day’ challenge last year, four female pilots from Lilydale Airport are continuing to encourage more women to take up flying.
Using International Women’s Day (IWD) and Women in Aviation Worldwide Week (WOAWW) as momentum to share details of the December adventure with pilots in training, an event was hosted on Sunday 5 March.
Australia in a day pilots Amanda Deed, Gail Collins, Theresa MacDonald and Jessica Phillips talked Lilydale Airport’s women’s group through the trip and presented all the highs and lows.
“We had about 18 girls come mostly related to Lilydale and they were all obviously interested in our Dawn to Dusk or Australia in a day program,” Gail said.
“We presented a series of photographs… and we could describe each one as the photos came up on which part of the day or the flight that took place, and some funny events and some serious and the challenges that we faced along the way.”
Reliving the memories of the flight itself, Gail said it was nice to “remember each leg of the flight and how it progressed, who was flying, who was copilot” but also to see the amazement on the faces of those listening.
Leaving Flinders Island in the early hours of the morning on 13 December, Amanda, Gail, Theresa and Jessica touched down in every mainland state and territory within 14.7 hours, finishing in Forrest Western Australia.
“You could see a lot of envious faces in the crowd, thinking maybe one day I can achieve this too,” Gail said.
Dawn to Dusk is an international competition inviting pilots to show high standards of flying which was opened by Prince Philip in 1964.
“Only one Australian woman has ever won it before, we hope to be the second,” Gail said.
For female pilots starting out in flying, Gail said the challenge herself and the team took on showed the possibilities of what can be achieved by women in aviation.
Whether it be a smaller competition or a challenge as large as the Dawn to Dusk, Gail said female pilots are showing their skills in all sorts of ways and spreading the message that it can be done.
“Any incentive for women to achieve something, we should encourage it and advertise it. Even at Avalon there were quite a few female pilots doing amazing things as well.
“We can only concentrate on what we’ve done and hopefully, people get some excitement over it.
“Even for our team itself, we’ve just created memories we will keep for life, which was pretty amazing.”
Not only did the team complete an incredible challenge, they were able to raise funds to support female pilots by donating $6000 to the Freda Thompson and Claire Embling Aviation Award.
With many of the women in attendance on Sunday new to flying, Gail said that’s when people are most “keen to listen to all these new stories”.
“It gives you the incentive because it’s challenging in the early stages of learning to fly. There’s days when you think I’m never ever going to do this, there are so many clever people around.
“You need to look further down the track and have a motto basically, ‘you only fail if you stop trying’.”
As women, supporting other women within their airport and the broader Australian Women’s Pilot Association, is essential to presenting the possibilities if they’re willing to explore.
“Any pilot wants to learn more, you’re forever learning. It doesn’t matter how many hours you’ve got in the logbook, you’re always learning.
“If you can do something challenging along the way, you don’t have to do a big worldwide competition, you can plan trips halfway around Australia, or there’s a lot of other groups that you can join and they visit a lot of homesteads in the middle of the outback
“Even if you can instil in them to go further than your airport and the training area that surrounds it, and venture out and do bigger and wider.”
