Aminta & Ray

Aminta Hennessy - Order of Australia Medal
I was always going to fly.

I lived in India, the USA, the UK – it was one momentous trip, when aged 7, I flew from the UK to India. I remember that trip like it was yesterday. That was it.  Whenever my two brothers provided the army and navy component in war games, I provided the air force! Somewhere along the line as a kid I knew that in order to get what one wanted one had to have this vision always in your head.  Mine was airplanes.

I learned very quickly working in London and being paid $10 pounds a week would not give me enough money to learn to fly.  Next move was to scour the newspapers and magazines to find out the cost of living in various countries and discovered that cigarettes were the cheapest in Australia by a long way so that was obviously the place to go. (Not that I smoked).  My mother told me about a 2^nd cousin who was leaving for Australia on the SS Canberra so why not team up.  On Australia Day 1964 we both boarded the train and left Paddington Station in London for Southampton, saying goodbye to our parents, leaving my mother crying on the platform and travelled to join the ship.  We were on the way to Australia that evening.

My cousin got off in Melbourne and myself in Sydney.  Within a couple of weeks, via Dalgety’s stock and station agents, we landed a job for both of us. My cousin as cook and myself as housemaid on a sheep station 20 miles from Walgett called Bairnkine. I got paid more than three times my London wage.  Now I had to sus out how to learn to fly in Australia.  Walgett had an Aero Club.  They had a scholarship available but I was told I would never get it because I was a POM.

OK get moving after saving lots of money. Back to Sydney, learn the scene, where to go.  There was an AD in a magazine saying Nancy Bird was the patron of the Royal Flying Doctor Service so I wrote to her and said I will fly for the RFDS if they pay for my flying.  She took the trouble to write back and said “Aminta, come and see me, and we will discuss how things work.”  A long friendship ensued.

I poked around Bankstown had 500 pounds in my pocket but no one would talk to me at the Royal Aero Club so I thought OK.  Need more money. I wish to learn to ski, it is winter I will go to the mountains.  Wow never earned so much money in my life at Thredbo. As the summer approached, I decided to learn to fly at Cooma, and so I hitched hiked every day arriving at 1000 am.  Stan Birtus, a Polish wartime pilot was my instructor. What a privilege. I had to leave the airport everyday by 1430 in order to hitch hike back to Perisher and get past the Tailem Bend turnoff before 1600 as the traffic stopped at that time.

Next – need much more money – the Government gave out scholarships in those days and I quickly worked out that the competition was too tough in Sydney – I had to go bush.  I applied for a job in Papua New Guinea and one as a male Traffic Officer under 21 for Conair in Alice Springs.  I wrote to Conair and said I am neither male nor under 21 but I will make a great Traffic Officer.  I got the job and bingo I found myself in the Alice where I not only had the time of my life but I could keep an eye on the competition.  While I studied, they were in the pub every night. Next, I had to find out who was on the scholarship committee.  A great friend of mine in SAATAS Air Charter said I know all these guys when they come into town, which they do, I will come and get you and we will go have a drink with them.  Some how I figured I had to stop flying when I got my Private Licence, as the committee, I suspected would not give a scholarship to someone who had gone a long way down the track to the Commercial Licence.  Hence at the time of my interview with these 6 men from South Australia I had a Private Licence, 67 hours and I new them all on a first name basis.   I got the scholarship which infuriated Eddie Connellan as by that time he had fired me on two grounds.  Whenever I was around no one did any work as they were all laughing and in any case I would never make a pilot of any consequence.   Many many years later, literally (2016) Christine Davy told me Eddie fired her regularly but she just turned up for work as usual the next day.  This I did not know.  I had by now moved across to the Stuart Arms Hotel and ran the public bar and the bottle shop.  Now that was an education.

I finished my commercial licence in the Alice. I then wrote to about 40 organisations all over Australia.  I received three replies one of which was from Kingsford Smith Flying School at Bankstown where they said “if you do your instructor rating with us, we will give you a job for one month and see if anyone wishes to fly with you.”  That was a challenge. I received my instructor rating at the end of 1967 – having gone from scratch to instructor rating in two years in a foreign country.

Never looked back and went from strength to strength receiving a great deal of help from all kinds of people from Peter Brown at Kingsford-Smith, Roy Coburn at Brabham’s, Jim Hazelton and Ray Clamback at Navair, Bill Davey from Avdev Airlines, going from strength to strength, multi engine instrument rating, from aircraft type to aircraft type, multiple twins, including 4 engine Herons, to Kingairs and Bandeirantes, Citations to ferrying world-wide.

During the course of time, I started, along with Nancy-Bird and Nancy Wells the Fear of Flying clinics in conjunction with Qantas and ran them for ten years, raising money for flying scholarships for women.  I helped start the Instructor Association of Australia, and ran that for about five years. Wanting to give back to aviation what I had been privileged to receive in my adopted country.

Clamback and Hennessy was started and we built in 1985 on the southern side of the airport near the Air Traffic Control Tower, dealing with The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), Air Traffic, students, airplanes, ground school, ferrying, you name it Clamback and Hennessy were into everything we could to make aviation a better place. We were lucky that we saw the ‘heyday’ of Australian Aviation. Now – “poof” what is left of our great industry?

I was glad we found a buyer and sold in November 2018 and retired completely on 30 June 2019 my 78^th birthday. The airport Authorities have pulled down the offices, got rid of all the trees that we planted and so there is nothing to show for 35 years of work on the southern side of the airport. Such is life.

However, I finished with 19,556.3 hours and had conducted 29 ferries crossing all the oceans and passed through many countries. Privileged life. Grateful.