Western Sydney airport named after Nancy-Bird Walton

The $5.3 billion western Sydney airport will be named after pioneering Australian aviator Nancy-Bird Walton.

Australian aviation pioneer Nancy-Bird Walton. Supplied by the PMO

The $5.3 billion western Sydney airport will be named after pioneering Australian aviator Nancy-Bird Walton, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced today.

The airport, under construction in Badgerys Creek, will officially become Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport when it opens in 2026.

Dubbed the “angel of the outback’’, Nancy-Bird Walton AO, OBE, was the first and youngest female pilot in Australia and the Commonwealth to have a license to carry passengers after she became fully qualified at the age of 19.

She began her aviation career in 1935 for the Royal Far West Children’s Health, flying nurses to the outback to provide medical services for children and their mothers. During World War II, she left to become the Commandant of the Women’s Air Training Corps where she recruited and trained women for a women’s auxiliary air force.

Mr Morrison said Nancy-Bird Walton’s determination to take to the sky was an inspiration and was a “natural choice” for the country’s newest airport.

“It is fitting that having recognised Charles Kingsford Smith at Sydney Airport that we now recognise Australia’s greatest female aviation pioneer, Nancy-Bird Walton in the naming of Western Sydney Airport,” he said.

Australian aviation pioneer Nancy-Bird Walton. Picture: PMO

Ms Walton was one of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith’s first students at his flying school in Sydney, defying the traditional role of females of her time.

Having founded the Australian Women Pilots Association, Ms Walton became a champion for women’s rights and helped form the Women’s Movement against Socialism, which she said aimed to educate Australian women in politics and not vote according to their husbands’ wishes.

In 1996, she was awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and was an Officer of the order of Australia. A year later, the National Trust of Australia declared her an Australian Living Treasure.

Ms Walton died in 2009 at the age of 93 and her granddaughter Anna Holman, 48, said the family was honoured to have the new airport named after her.

“We’re all really avid travellers, and at airports very often so to be able to fly into one that’s named after your grandmother is … something out of the ordinary,” she told The Daily Telegraph.