BEYOND THE SKY
The passions of Millicent Bryant, aviator
The lost life of Australias first woman pilot
James Vicars
M
MELBOURNE BOOKS
To Millicent
To the Reader
This is a biographical work based on extensive research and historical sources, and in this respect is no different to the careful re-creation that most biographers embark on. However, I have taken the less usual path of telling Millicent Bryants life in the form of a story. One reason is that the historical sources are fragmented and unbalancedthin in earlier times and richer towards the end of her 49-year timescale. But it also became clear in the course of my research and writing that every biography is necessarily a story, even if the type of construction varies. In contemplating what I knew of Millicents life, I realised that its significance is its story; I also saw that telling it in this way could help readers meet her more fully and for her voice, as it comes through in her letters and other writings, to be heard.
These utterances, along with those reported in the newspapers of the time, record Millicents own view of the world. They are the essence of this work, and have guided my addition of connecting utterances and conversations, meetings and events that seemed likely to have taken placethat is, in some form, to have genuinely been part of Millicents life. In bringing these together, the flow and immersion of story also helps to draw out the personality of an individual whose life, spanning the colonial period, the newly-federated nation and the tragedies of World War I, came to reflect the vigour, values and conflicts of the Australia of the early twentieth century rather than just the historical part she played in the development of flight.
Some readers may still ask, How do I know what is factual, what really took place? Can I trust in a story? This kind of work may make it a little less easy to separate out individual facts, but I have worked fully with the record, not against it. The substantial details are drawn from accepted histories and primary sources. The more minor but extensive everyday details (especially in Part 1) that flesh out the story are almost all drawn from Millicents letters and writingsthese also provide some key anchor points to her early life in the second part, which is otherwise created from family and local history. The specific sources I have drawn on for each chapter appear in the endnotes, and this section is preceded by a further explanation of my approach that I invite you to read. Beyond these, there are occurrences, thoughts, interactions and emotional currents that are unrecorded but still part of the story. For these, I have drawn on my whole, wider knowledge to imagine what might have happened and to sketch it into the narrative. In so doing I have tried to hold to what American author William Styron called a responsible imagination, not freely-imagined fiction.
In this respect, where I have imagined my great-grandmothers life I have drawn on the sense of personal connection I developed with her over the distance of time, her subtle but formative impacts on my own life and the indispensable insights of my mother (also named Millicent). Most biographers draw on such connections implicitly, but I believe these have been essential in ensuring that this story is as true to the subject as I could make it and can bring the reader towards their own meeting with Millicent. My particular journey has been to explore who Millicent was and to come to a closer understanding of a complex and passionate individual who connects us nearly a century later with how we travel, how we see Australia as a nation, how we see ourselves as men and womenand how we view our horizons. This is perhaps the legacy of Millicent Bryant, aviator.
J. V.
Foreword
Years have passed since I opened my fathers treasure chest of memories to find, in letters and other papers, a true picture of the life of his mother, and my grandmother, Millicent Bryant (ne Harvey). I had myself always planned to sort, select and write her storythe fascinating and remarkable storyof a pioneering family and an aviation record. For, in 1927, Millicent became the first woman in the Commonwealth outside Britain to gain her pilots licence.
My dear friend Nancy Bird Walton, well known as the first woman in Australia to get her commercial licence, greatly admired my grandmother and insisted her story be written. This is such an important page in Australian history, and must be told, she said.
I certainly agreed with her, and asked: Well, if I do tell the story, will you write the foreword?
Of course, she replied, It would be the greatest honour to do so.
Sadly that hasnt happened, so it is now I who am writing this foreword. But I am delighted that it is my son James Vicars, an accomplished writer, who has brought to the world the story not only of this little remembered part of aviation history but also that of a remarkable woman in early twentieth-century Australia who should be better known to us all.
Millicent Jones
Kendall, 2019
From Sky to Water
November 3rd, 1927
It was a spring evening in Sydney but light clouds held the humidity in. There was barely a breeze, and it passed through Bowen Bryants mind that he ought to be sweating.
But inside his jacket a chill was spreading, rising like a subterranean river from the pit of his stomach up into his chest. As he turned into George Street from Circular Quay, the deepening shadows of the buildings seemed to touch him with the same icy foreboding that was threatening to engulf him from the inside.
Yet some barrier held it back and allowed him to continue. It held back almost everything he felt and fearedno doubt it was some mechanism Mr Carpenter, his Science Master, could explain. And he probably had done, if only Bowen had been listening. Suddenly school days seemed precious: theyd just ended, and now the full impact of adult life, with its brutal realities, was threatening to come down on him. He had to force himself to take the next step, and then the next.
And each one brought him closer to the morgue. If only his brothers were here. He was the youngest: it shouldnt be up to him.
He could see her face before him. Leaning over his bed. Across the dining table. At golf. The newspaper photographs also flashed to mind, along with the headlines from the clippings hed collected.
Brava!
Woman Flyer!
Thrill at Mascot
There was praise for his mothers cool efficiency. The excitement when she touched down perfectly, only nine months ago, to be hailed as Australias first woman pilot. The photos in her flying cap, small and slight as always Itz, as his brother Jack teasingly called her.
But now there was the possibility, wraith-like in the twilight, that something awful had happened to her. There was no space in which to grasp this thought, and he paused mid-step. Surely his life couldnt be shaken so easily. It had substance. Like the new home his mother had built and furnished overlooking Vaucluse Bay, with its books and sofas and paintings and gramophone cabinet in the corner. They were familiar and solid, full of her presence. Probably she was back there right now. And there was their plan, with the packing and preparations nearly finished: they would leave next week to drive across Australia from east to west. Theyd greet Jacks ship in Fremantle. Surprise him, then race him back in the new Locomobile. Shed be the first woman to do that, toohe could see the headline in his minds eye.
But the image vanished into the grey pavement and brought him back to his own footsteps. Back to the coldness in his stomach. Suddenly, it all seemed flimsy, like a schoolboy dare. He looked around at the darkening buildings, the empty hawkers barrows, the lights in the windows. Only a couple of hours ago hed been reading on the verandah, idling while his mother finished her business in the city. Or shoppinghed didnt remember which it was. Shed been definite, however, about coming back on the school boat, as everyone called the 4.14pm ferry to Watsons Bay.
