‘It’s madness’: How one woman took on the boys’ club to become a commercial pilot

She learnt to fly a plane before she was old enough to drive a car, and went on to become the first female commercial pilot in Australia after winning a landmark case under the Sex Discrimination Act in 1979.

But most people have never heard of Deborah Lawrie.

Now comedy playwriting duo, Genevieve Hegney and Catherine Moore, plan to change that. The pair worked with Lawrie for years to create the show, Fly Girl, which opens at the Ensemble Theatre on October 17.

“My story is well known in aviation and legal circles and there’s a lot of people that do remember it but not everyone does,” Lawrie says. “So I think it’s an important story to get out there, especially for younger people who might be thinking they can’t do something or achieve something.”

Hegney and Moore met with Lawrie several years ago after Ensemble Theatre creative director, Mark Kilmurry, sent them an article about Lawrie’s fight to become a commercial airline pilot.

The pair were shocked at the misogyny that surrounded the case –“there was a quote (in the article) from Reg Ansett that said women can’t fly because they get hysterical once a month and what about their earrings,” Hegney says with a laugh.

Despite knowing nothing about aviation or the law, the pair embarked on a mission to tell the story the only way they knew how – with humour, and lots of it.

Not that the women are downplaying the historical importance of the story, rather they feel that seeing it through the “absurdity of the context of the 1970s” will help to highlight what is at the heart of the subject.

“Gen and I don’t approach anything without comedy, it’s how we see the world,” says Moore. “But that’s also how we get through the darkness.

Hegney jumps in: “This was a bleak time. But you don’t want to put on a show and go ‘and then she went to court’. We have to show the humour and then really drop into this woman’s struggle. Comedy opens you up and once you’re open, then you can find the pathos and the drama of the situation.

“We find in this play you’ll be laughing but then when you land in the truth of what this extraordinary woman went through, you’ll cry too.”

Lawrie (then Deborah Wardley) was born in Sydney in 1953. When she was 14, her father turned his attention to flying and Lawrie says she would accompany him to the airport to watch his flights and help him with his theory.

“One day they stuck me in the back of the aircraft, that happened a few times,” Lawrie recalls. “Then dad said to me ‘I’ll give you a flying lesson for your 16th birthday’ and I did that and hated it, absolutely hated it.”

“But dad always said that the pinnacle of learning to fly is going solo. So I decided I’d get to that point. I only had those first two lessons from him, then I had to mow the lawn, wash cars, do babysitting, to pay for the rest. And finally the day came just before I turned 17 and I went solo and that was the magical moment where I never looked back.”

The following year, at just 18, Lawrie obtained her private pilot’s licence and when she was 20, her commercial pilot’s licence. By 1976, at the age of 23, she was an aviation flying instructor and decided she’d apply to a major airline. For the next two years, she applied to Ansett Airlines without success, and in 1978 she was granted an interview, only to be rejected.

So, Lawrie took the case to the Victorian Equal Opportunities board. It was the first sex discrimination in employment case presented before the board. The board ruled that Ansett’s refusal to employ her was illegal. Ansett appealed to the Supreme Court of Victoria, but the case was dismissed, so they appealed to the High Court of Australia, where it was also dismissed.

Ansett was ordered to include Lawrie in their next pilot training program and on January 22, 1980, Lawrie co-piloted an Ansett flight from Alice Springs to Darwin.

While there are about 40 characters in the two-hour show, Hegney and Moore said they were allowed just five cast members, which meant Moore has to play 15 of them and Hegney, eight or 10 – she’s lost count.

“Cath, for instance, will walk on in a trench coat and glasses, walk off, come back in a wig and moustache two lines later, then walk off and come back serving tea … it’s madness,” Hegney laughs. “At one point Cath and I will turn from Reg Ansett and his manager Frank Pascoe, into air hostesses and people will have no option but to see it happen, there’s no time to run backstage to change.”

Fly Girl , Ensemble Theatre, October 17 to November 22, ensemble.com.au
-MERCEDES MAGUIRE

Decades ago they earned a platinum record in Australia. Now they’re finally touring

“I’ve practised the art of obscurity – for 50 years!” David Surkamp says, laughing. The statement is true, as far as it goes. But it’s also true that Surkamp and his venerable band, Pavlov’s Dog, do have a genuine – if, yes, somewhat obscure – place in rock history, stretching back to the heyday of 1970s progressive rock.

Surkamp, now 73, and his full seven-piece ensemble will be playing shows in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane this month – performing, for the first time, before the audiences that gave him his first and only platinum record, decades ago.

Pavlov’s Dog’s first two records are intriguing footnotes to progressive rock history, and have always had their adherents. The band’s fervent instrumentation boasts a soaring violin and piano arpeggios, charging guitars and grandiose visions, like any self-respecting prog-rock outlet from the time.

But then comes the admixture of Surkamp’s lush and heavily romanticised songs – unusual for a genre more interested in sci-fi fantasias and epic history plays. Tilt your head a bit and Pavlov’s Dog is also a driving, even anthemic rock outlet – and one with a leader who can deliver striking power ballads as well.

The band is known, or perhaps notorious, for one other thing: Surkamp’s distinctive voice. It is a piercing and high instrument, with power and range (and, some will say, power to alienate) a step above even the keening warblings of a Geddy Lee (of Rush) or Jon Anderson (of Yes).

On a recent Zoom chat from his home in Missouri, Surkamp recalled that his only previous trip to Australia was to pick up his platinum record, for the band’s first album, Pampered Menial.

“I spent the day with George Young and Harry Vanda,” he said with some enthusiasm. “I did a radio interview, and the disc jockey gets a call. It was either Harry or George, I don’t know which one, and they said, Would David like to come over and hang out? I was out of my mind. Of course I want to hang out! One of my first two singles, I think I bought, like, in grade school, one was Friday on My Mind.”

Surkamp grew up in Missouri, the heart of the Great American Midwest – not a hotbed of progressive rock. He was asthmatic and solitary as a child, finding refuge in books and music. But his visions for the band he eventually formed had no boundaries.

“I think we were the only progressive rock band in the country at the time,” he said. “We had two or three Mellotrons. We had a Minimoog and an ARP [all adventuresome early synthesisers back then]. We had Italian string ensembles. I mean, we were insane!”

While some had issues with Surkamp’s voice, the clarity and ambition of his musical vision was undeniable. Bands from the era who weren’t destined for stardom were often chewed up and spit out, but Surkamp was luckier than most. In the Wild West of the record business of the time, Pavlov’s Dog scored big – a signing battle gave them a $US500,000 deal with ABC Records. Then the label imploded, and the band was scooped up by Columbia – for another huge advance.

But Surkamp never quite emerged from the penumbra of 1970s rock’n’roll fame. There were full page ads in Rolling Stone ... but never an actual review there.

Still, Surkamp and the band toured steadily, dragging mountains of instruments and amplifiers along with them to recreate his tsunamis of sound on stage.

“I never really had a grasp of economics,” he reflects. “I mean, I would have had a trio if I was smart. We had a lot of gear! When people ask me why I sang so high back then, I mean, how else could I cut through that shit, you know?

“It’s impossible, so I went up into my upper registers a lot just to cut through it.”

Along the way he met bands from all over the word, he says, from Yes to Jefferson Starship, Fairport Convention to King Crimson. YouTube videos of recent Pavlov’s Dog shows attest that Surkamp can still hit the high notes.

“I’m a much better singer now than I was back then,” he says confidently.

After a second record, internal infighting troubled the band. Surkamp eventually recorded under the name Hi-Fi, with Iain Matthews, previously a mainstay of Fairport. Then came some solo work – and even a lengthy stint as a pop-music critic for his hometown newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But then, with new backing musicians, he eventually revivified Pavlov’s Dog and has recorded and toured intermittently since.

He’s happy to tour and grateful to perform, he says, but the solitary pull of his childhood has never left him.

“In my room here, in my living room, I have a 129-year-old piano, I got a 50-year-old Les Paul, I got a Telecaster, I got a mandolin, and a Fender amp. And I’m perfectly happy in this room. If I never left, I’d be OK.”

Pavlov’s Dog, Factory Theatre, October 17 
- BILL WYMAN

‘It’s tricky’: Why this jazz legend compares his art to table tennis

The song You Only Live Twice (from the James Bond film of the same name) would have more kitsch quotient than improvising potential to most ears. Not Bill Frisell.

The one constant in the work of the jazz guitarist – a peer of John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and John Scofield – has been eclecticism, reflecting both his diverse childhood tastes and ever-expanding horizons as a player and composer.

“Part of it is just being more open to whatever it is that I’ve heard at any moment in my life,” he says via Zoom. “When I was younger, I was much more worried about what people would think was cool or fashionable or whatever, and as I’ve gotten older, I couldn’t care less about that. It’s more about what touches me, and just putting it out there.”

Not only can Frisell still harness the remembered impact of the Bond film on his young self, he also appreciates the song’s inherent craft. “The closer you look at some of these things,” he observes, “the deeper it gets. Because it was popular doesn’t mean it was bad.”

Children’s brimming imaginations seem to become stifled with age, and when I suggest to Frisell that being an artist may partly be about reaching adulthood with the imagination intact, he says he consciously clings to it: “Remembering when you’re a kid, and you see something for the first time; just the excitement of discovering something new. I think it’s really important, not just for artists, but anybody, whatever we’re doing, whether it’s mowing the lawn or cooking a meal, to just try to hold on to that.”

The band he’s bringing to Australia once again consists of bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston, who still surprise him every time they play. “If it ever gets like you know what’s going to happen,” he says, “then I think you have to move on to something else.”

Beyond the intra-band trust required to take the risks that create surprises, there’s a related issue of reaching – and staying in – the fragile zone where the music almost seems to play itself.

“That’s definitely one of the biggest challenges,” Frisell agrees, and he tells a story about playing table tennis with his daughter, when, rather than scoring, they aimed to sustain a 100-shot rally.

After many false starts, they found a rhythm, and eventually sailed past 100, 200, 300, all the way to 608, at which point he dared think they could reach 1000.

“At that moment, bam! I missed it,” he says. “That happens when I’m playing [music]. It’s tricky. It’s like you’re flying or something, and then if you realise that you’re flying – uh-oh. Crash! I suddenly realise I’ve just done something that I’ve never done before, and as soon as I do, it throws me off. Maybe I’m better at it, but there’s always that struggle with whatever mental stuff is going on.”

Eliminating mental noise is also key to his composing. “That’s an amazing feeling when it just starts, and you don’t know where it’s coming from,” he enthuses.

“One note will just lead you to the next somehow. When my daughter was beginning in school, and they were teaching the kids to read and write, they told her not to worry about spelling, and it really made sense: just let it come out, and then you can fix it later. I really experience that with writing music. The worst thing you can do is judge it right when you’re in the midst of it.”

Bill Frisell Trio, City Recital Hall, October 22.
- JOHN SHAND

‘Help Country’: How a tiny endangered possum inspired this new children’s show

Just over a year ago, theatre artist Yolande Brown and her then nine-year-old son woke early in Kosciuszko National Park to count bogong moths.

Joining Dr Linda Broome, a threatened species expert, they set out across the alpine region to open bucket light traps, each temporarily holding the native nocturnal species known for flying 1000 kilometres during their annual migration from warmer climes.

“As soon as you opened the bucket, there was this scent,” Brown says. “It smelt like nectar because they’d been pollinating the flowering plants in the area.”

The day before, Brown, a descendant of the Bidjara clan of the Kunja nation in central Queensland, had joined Broome in counting mountain pygmy possums, a tiny endangered ground-dwelling marsupial whose population has been affected by drought and the 2020-21 bushfires.

“They were no bigger than the palm of your hand,” Brown says. “Some had babies in their pouches. They were wriggly and feisty because it was windy and that was getting under their fur.”

The reason Brown travelled to the annual alpine species count was her theatre work, The Bogong’s Song: A Call to Country, a new children’s show created for Bangarra Dance Theatre.

Incorporating storytelling, dance, video, shadow puppetry and original songs, the show, made for children aged five and up, features performers Benjin Maza and Tjilala Brown-Roberts as siblings on the eve of travelling to be with their grandmother.

“They pack their bags and, after falling asleep, they enter the bogong’s dream as fractals of the bogong’s imagination,” Brown says. “They’re given a mission to find a missing bogong moth and they get separated on their journey. They meet different creatures, each with something to share and teach them.”

Among them are the pygmy possum and the Guthega skink, another endangered alpine species. They also encounter an old snow gum and the soft, delicate grasses of the Kosciuszko alpine area.

Brown, a former Bangarra senior artist and co-CEO of Indigenous mentoring organisation AIME, says the show, co-written by Brown and Chenoa Deemal, is partly about protecting and respecting Country and its creatures, and partly about the siblings dealing with life without their absent brother, who is in juvenile detention.

“They’re learning about how to be stronger for themselves,” Brown says. “Because when they’re strong, they can also help family and help Country. And, when Country is strong, we’re all strong.”

The siblings also use Auslan when talking about their brother because he is deaf. Early in the show’s creation, deaf consultant James Kerwin asked if the work was about the bogong moth because there was a deaf child in the story.

“I said no, and he explained that deaf people are often paralleled to moths because both need the light,” Brown says. “You can’t sign or lip-read in the dark. He said if you’re in the street, you’d gather under the street lights with the moths to sign.”

Giving the bogong moth a speaking voice in the work inspired another connection. At first, Brown and her collaborators tried using filters on a vocal recording, but it sounded artificial. Then they thought of a child’s voice.

Now, Brown’s son, Xavier, is the bogong moth’s voice, guiding the characters and audience through its dreams, flight and world.

“It’s truly come full circle,” Brown says. “Xavier got to go on Country, he was part of the show’s exploration and he’s been involved from the get-go.

“It’s lovely because he’s really put his heart into it.”

The Bogong’s Song is at Bangarra Dance Theatre, Hickson Road
Walsh Bay, until October 19, bangarra.com.au

-LENNY ANN LOW