Taking Flight. Lores Bonney’s Extraordinary Flying Career

STOP PRESS! My fifth book will be going to the printers in less than a month, and the final artwork for the covers has been signed off.

 

As you know, I have been puddling around in WWII service aviation for over a decade and so Taking Flight. Lores Bonney’s Extraordinary Flying Career is a departure for me but, as with any writing project, it has been challenging and fulfilling and has opened up to me a whole new vista of Australia’s aviation history. Hopefully it will highlight a new perspective of that history to others who were not aware that women played their own significant part in it, and who do not know of Lores Bonney’s place it in.

 

And what did Lores Bonney achieve? (BTW: the name is pronounced Lo-ri.)  

 

Lores Bonney’s aerial achievements were remarkable; in her day she was regarded as perhaps Australia’s most competent aviatrix. In 1931, she set a new Australian record for a one-day flight by a woman. In 1932, she became the first woman to circumnavigate mainland Australia by air. In 1933, she was acknowledged as the first woman to fly from Australia to England. She made the first solo flight from Australia to Cape Town, South Africa, in 1937. This was to be her last long-distance expedition.

 

The former airwoman donated a considerable archive to Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum in 1984. She withheld some items and, in 2011, her goddaughter gifted them to the National Library of Australia. ‘MS 10127 Papers of Maude (Lores) Bonney’ includes correspondence with the Civil Aviation Branch of the Department of Defence, objects associated with the aviatrix’s flying career, news clippings and photos, scrapbooks, trophies, and even a flying suit and cap.

 

Taking Flight. Lores Bonney’s Extraordinary Flying Career is based on these two collections and, in particular, the most significant items in the National Library’s collection: the diaries Lores kept preceding and during her 1933 and 1937 flights.

 

I love it when covers tell a story and there is much more to this than just the image of a seemingly confident aviatrix. As you can see, Lores is standing in front of an array of radiant beams of light. They don’t just mirror her great smile. They directly relate to a potentially fatal flying accident.

 

Just before that accident (and you will have to read the book to find out about the actual accident) a photo was taken of Lores in flight. Afterwards, a friend commented that it ‘seems to show light rays from above meeting in an aura of brightness behind the pilot’s head in the cockpit. Moments later you were lucky to be still living’. Lores was deeply religious and often claimed that God flew as her co-pilot. Her friend wondered if the halo had anything to do with him. Perhaps it did. Looking back on it, Lores considered that the ‘only thing … which saved us both from being killed was that it was not our time to go’.

 

 

So, here is a sneak preview of the cover art for Taking Flight. Lores Bonney’s Extraordinary Flying Career which is due out in March 2016. Compare it with the photo taken before the accident. I think you will see the inspiration for part of the cover design.

 

I will advise full details of the book here in due course! Just try and stop me!