Royal Flying Doctor Service International Women’s Day Reception

Chair, Royal Queensland Flying Doctor Service Queensland Section, Ms Georgie Somerset AM; Tim Fairfax Family Foundation Trustee, Mrs Gina Fairfax AC; RFDS staff and supporters; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen. 

I acknowledge the Original Custodians of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbul and Jagera people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and to any First Nations people here this evening.

I was very pleased to receive the invitation from your CEO, Ms Meredith Staib, to join you this afternoon as patron of the Queensland Section of the Royal Queensland Flying Doctor Service.

At the outset, I must say I am delighted that you have chosen the Moreton Club as the venue for this celebration of International Women’s Day 2026, because both this club and the RFDS were products of the same transformative decade for women in Australia – the 1920s.

A century ago, Australian women had been empowered politically through the introduction of suffrage at Federation, and the first World War had brought them greater autonomy and independence. However, only with rapid social change, economic growth, and the technological advances of the post-war decade did they move beyond traditional domestic roles.

Those women quickly began to seek opportunities to develop social and professional networks––and the Moreton Club played a key role in this.

Another of the consequences of the explosive energy of the Roaring Twenties was that previously unattainable careers became possible for women, including the two professions at the very heart of the Royal Flying Doctor Service – aviation and medicine.

It’s difficult to imagine it today, but it took almost 100 years from the time of the first European settlement in Australia for a woman to be accepted into university to study medicine and, even then, local opposition was so strong that that first student, Dagmar Berne, eventually had to complete her studies and training in the UK.

It pains me to say that it was not just society at large that rejected the notion of a woman doctor but so too did the academics at my alma mater, The University of Sydney!

Fortunately, Dr Dagmar Bernesuccessfully registered when she returned from the UK and became part of history as one of Australia’s very first woman doctors.

Here in Queensland, there was an even more determined trail-blazer – Dr Lillian Cooper, who even defied bans in order to serve as a surgeon on the battlefields of Europe in World War I.

She would certainly have relished the adventure and opportunity offered by the Royal Flying Doctor Service!

Although aviation remained no more accessible than medicine as a career for women for many years, by the 1930s Queensland had extraordinary examples like the 16-year-old Ivy Pearcewho became one of Australia’s first acrobatic pilots, flying her very own Tiger Moth.

A century ago, it was women like Ivy Pearce and Dr Lillian Cooper who showed women that they, too, could dare to dream – and to fly, and to practise medicine.

Today, Australia’s medical schools produce more female graduates than males, and when we fly, the voice announcing, ‘This is your Captain speaking’, could just as readily belong to a woman as a man.

We know that women are still disproportionately subject to sexual harassment and violence; they still experience discrimination; and they are yet to achieve equal pay and better representation on corporate boards.

But there are some fine examples of corporate leadership in this space, not the least of which is the Royal Flying Doctor Service itself – not only was Meredith Staib appointed as CEO of the Queensland Section in 2018, but last year Emma Buchanan was appointed as Chief Executive of the Federation

That is cause for celebration. Happy International Women’s Day!