Gabrielle ‘Gaby’ Kennard OAM (b. 1944) was the first Australian woman to fly solo around the world. Kennard was born in Melbourne, where she spent the first years of her life dreaming of flying, inspired by her childhood hero Amelia Earhart: ‘I would stand on a fence or wall and imagine that I could fly off into the wide world, just by flapping my arms’. Moving to Sydney at age seven with her mother and sister, she subsequently learned at the age of eighteen that her natural father, an American World War Two pilot, had died in a plane crash before her birth. It was at age 34 that Kennard, then a single mother working for a pharmaceutical company, had her first ever flying lessons.
Kennard gained her pilot’s licence in 1979, her commercial pilot’s licence in 1984, her multi-engine command instrument rating in 1985, and her seaplane licence in 1987. She spent the following year planning and preparing for her flight, including obtaining and fitting out a second-hand single-engine 1981 model Piper Saratoga aircraft, which she nicknamed ‘Gertie’. Kennard began her solo flight around the world on the 3rd of August 1989, departing from Sydney’s Bankstown Airport. The challenges of the flight were stark: from loneliness, visa issues and low visibility to the repeated malfunctioning of her computer navigation equipment and a terrifying episode of five engine cut-outs over open ocean, caused by a faulty valve after she’d switched between fuel tanks.
Kennard completed the 54,000 km flight in 99 days. The number was a poignant coincidence: at several stopovers, Kennard was welcomed by fellow members of the Ninety-Nines, the international organisation of licensed women pilots founded by Amelia Earhart and fellow pilots in 1929, and named after the original number of charter members. (The pioneering Earhart famously disappeared in 1937 while attempting a similar flight.) Crowds, an official reception and a motorcade through the Sydney CBD greeted Kennard on her arrival home.
Kennard’s record-breaking achievement was recognised with the award of the Harmon Trophy, the Nancy Bird Walton Trophy for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman of Australasia, the Australian Geographic Spirit of Adventure Award, and the keys to the cities of Sydney; Atchison, USA; and Memphis, USA. In 1993, Kennard flew solo around Australia, raising money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. At the end of her book, Solo Woman: Gaby Kennard’s World Flight, the aviator reflects philosophically on her achievement: ‘I am an ordinary person, capable of extraordinary things – like all of us’.
