‘Eventually after I smiled and nodded a lot I was able to lead one man by the arm into the surf. By performing a great pantomime I showed him what I wanted. He called out, and the rest joined us in the water. I invented a sort of ‘heave-ho’ chant, and by pulling in unison and using the power of the incoming waves we dragged my plane onto the beach.

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‘Afterward they led me to a large communal thatched hut. We climbed a ladder to get in. Once inside I was overpowered by the smoke and the smell of rotting fish. Dozens of villagers squatted on the bamboo floor staring at me. I was quite worried until a little hand crept into mine and a young village girl led me to a small alcove at the end of the hut. She noticed that my hand was bleeding and tenderly held it to her face. Her eyes expressed such sympathy that I was close to tears. From that moment she became my shadow, my self-appointed bodyguard. She would let no one else do anything for me. I nicknamed her SOS, short for Soul of Sympathy.

‘SOS brought me some twine and a sarong, which I strung up to make a room divider. To prevent blood poisoning I doused my slashed hand with a bottle of whisky we had rescued from the wreck. It had been given me by the owner of the Charleville Hotel [in Australia] a few nights earlier. It was his traditional gift to every passing flier heading across the shark-infested Timor Sea. ‘It’ll give you a bit of Dutch courage,’ he told me. I hadn’t touched mine till then.’

The next morning Bonney inspected My Little Ship. The wings, tail fin, rudder and propeller were smashed. Only the fuselage and engine appeared undamaged. The villagers helped her remove the wings, and she used the contents of the petrol tank to wash the salt and sand from the engine. To prevent corrosion, she plastered the power plant with oil drained from the sump.

That night Bonney joined the families around the communal fire in the village. Hoping to get word to Victoria Point, she wrote a note and then, waving it about, pointed toward the mainland. ‘The men seemed reluctant to go until I bribed one of them with my gold watch,’ she recalled.

To pass the time, Bonney learned the language. After a couple of evenings she knew the Malay names of every item in the hut and, in return, had taught the villagers the English equivalents. The adults tried to entice her to join their nightly betel nut chewing ceremony. She recalled: ‘They chewed betel just like we take an evening drink. I was more fascinated by the spitting than the chewing. Long streams of crimson fluid shot from their mouths through the narrow gaps in the bamboo cane floor. No one seemed to miss.’

On the sixth day a motor launch arrived, carrying a Scot and a New Zealander employed by the Siamese Tin Mine Syndicate. They were not happy when Bonney refused to leave without the wreckage of her Moth. ‘I told them that I planned to get my plane repaired and carry on to England — even if it took me 10 years,’ said Bonney. ‘They thought I was quite mad and suggested that my husband would be ‘worried sick’ and that I should really ask him first. Well, after that sort of nonsense I was more determined than ever.’

She shipped her wrecked Moth to Calcutta, where repairs took a month. Taking off again on May 25, 1933, she carried on with her journey at a leisurely pace. Knowing that she had no hope of establishing any kind of record, she had decided to sightsee at the 17 refueling stops that still lay between her and England. For Bonney it would be enough to be the first woman to complete the westbound flight between Australia and England. ‘Being the first is enduring,’ she later recalled, smiling. ‘Unlike speed records, no one can take that away from you.

Bonney landed at London’s Croydon Airport on June 21, 1933, having completed the 12,300 miles in 157 hours’ flight time. Although she was awarded a medal by King George V for her feat, Australians remained apathetic about her achievement. They saw her as a wealthy woman financed by her husband, unlike their male heroes Hinkler and Kingsford Smith, who were hard-up and had struggled to find sponsors for their efforts. Furthermore, Bonney had finished her flight on the other side of the world, while her male counterparts ended their record attempts on Australian soil.

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