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Lores Bonney: Australian Female PilotAviation History | one comment | Print This Post | Email This Post
Bonney faced the same reaction in 1937 on the Brisbane–Cape Town flight in a newly acquired German Klemm L32 monoplane, which she had christened My Little Ship II. The 18,200-mile epic across Asia, the Middle East and Africa was by far the most demanding of her flights. Even today, few pilots would undertake the journey in a single-engine machine. In 1937 it was a truly daring undertaking. At the start of the journey, Bonney recalled, ‘The press were out in force but treated my departure more like a society event than the start of a pioneering flight.’ Subscribe Today
In a repeat of her 1933 flight to London, Lores was lashed by storms and fried by the heat. Delayed for a week by torrential rain in Bangkok, she was advised by a British airline pilot to go home. ‘This is no place for a woman,’ he told her. Bonney recalled her reaction: ‘That did it. Next day I got through to Tavoy. It was only a short two-hour stepping-stone, but it enabled me to break through the bad weather.’
Over India, Bonney was forced down to 300 feet in order to avoid horrendous headwinds and flocks of circling hawks. The heat was so intense that she was unable to place her bare hand on the throttle. ‘I wrapped some cloth around the burning metal and revived myself periodically with crushed smelling salts,’ she remembered. ‘When I landed at Agra I discovered that the heat of the Klemm’s rudder pedals had melted the gum which attached the soles of my shoes. They flapped as I walked across the airfield.’
Crossing the Middle East, she flew through sandstorms, was badgered by officials and was advised by a friendly local known as ‘One-Eyed Ali’ to sleep with her pistol under her pillow. In Cairo, the halfway point of her flight, she battled with Egyptian bureaucrats who were ponderously slow in completing the formalities that would allow her to fly up the Nile over the sudd — a vast area of floating vegetation that spelled almost certain death to any flier unlucky enough to be forced down there. They tried to tell her it was ‘too dangerous for a woman.’
The head of Australia’s Department of Civil Aviation wrote on her behalf to the Egyptian government, and Bonney was eventually granted permission to proceed up the Nile. A week later, south of Khartoum, she became stranded when her plane was damaged during a bush landing. Undeterred, she stopped a passing Nile paddle-wheeler and steamed back to Khartoum with her aircraft towed behind on a small barge. There, she talked officials at the local Royal Air Force detachment into repairing her machine.
The repairs took three weeks, but Bonney waited an extra three days after that in the hope of meeting American airwoman Amelia Earhart, who was due to arrive in Khartoum on her fateful around-the-world flight with Fred Noonan. With no news of Earhart, Bonney finally left Khartoum on July 10, 1937. Earhart and Noonan arrived two days later.
It took the never-give-up airwoman another five weeks to reach Cape Town. Along the way she was forced to replace a blown engine gasket, patch a damaged wing and rebuild landing gear that collapsed as she commenced her takeoff run from the mining town of Broken Hill.
What was perhaps the most dangerous moment of the flight occurred approaching Nairobi, when Bonney was forced to fly blind in clouds to cross the mountains. She recalled: ‘I thought I had a 2,000-foot safety margin until I suddenly broke into the clear. I was about 30 seconds away from flying into the side of a peak! I hauled back and over on the control stick….We missed the rock face by less than 100 feet. In Nairobi an engineer checked my altimeter and discovered it was over-reading by almost 2,500 feet. No wonder I almost clipped the mountain.’
In Pretoria, where she had been born, Bonney was awarded ceremonial pilot’s wings by the Royal South African Air Force — a mark of respect for her remarkable flight. One week later, following a nightmare flight across the Hex River Mountains, where violent turbulence made control almost impossible, Lores landed in Cape Town. ‘Bravo Mrs. Bonney — Intrepid Airwoman,’ read the headlines of South Africa’s newspapers. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
            Tags: Adventurers & Trail Blazers, Aviation History, Women's History
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One Comment to “Lores Bonney: Australian Female Pilot”
As a girl, my mother Ida Florence Meier lived in 52 Dover Street, Newmarket (Flemington) and Maudie Bonney lived in the same street. My mother was born on 6 December 1893, so she and Maudie were much the same age and they played together. Maudie Bonney took my mother to meet her father and he said to Maudie I’m told, “What is your friends name?” and Maudie said, “Her name is Ida.” and Maudie’s dad said “Then I shall call you Ida Spider.” For all their lives and my mother died 13th February 1983, the ladies remained friends. As a boy I called Maudie “Auntie Maudie”, and she always called my mother “Spider”. I still have a copy of Terry Gwynn-Jones book “Pioneer Airwoman” which Auntie Maudie gave my mother on my mothers birthday in 1979. Maudie has written on the page with the Jonathathon Livingston Seagull Quote, the following inscription:
‘To Dear “Spider”
My first Australian friend.
With Great affection.
Maude (Lores) Bonney.
7 /12 / 1979″
I have read many articles about her but there is never refernce to the time she lived in Flemington (Newmarket) in Victoria.
She visited my family when ever she came to Melbourne and my mother and I visited her whenever we were in Queensland.
I am now 71 years of age.
By Edward F Dickinson on Nov 21, 2008 at 8:21 pm