Florence Violet McKenzie

[1] She campaigned successfully to have some of her female trainees accepted into the all-male Navy, thereby originating the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS).

[5] Florence Violet Granville was born in Melbourne on 28 September 1890 to George and Marie Annie (née Giles) Wallace.

Her elder brother had studied to become an electrical engineer in England while Violet was in high school, returning as she began her teaching diploma.

She held her licence continuously till the commencement of WW2 in 1939 when all Australian amateur transmitting privileges were withdrawn for the duration of the war.

[21] That same year she travelled to the United States for business reasons, and in San Francisco was welcomed at Radio KGO: 'Miss Wallace, an electrical engineer from Australia, will now talk from the studio.'

[10] In January 1933 the American journal Aquariana published an article written by McKenzie concerning 'Some interesting inhabitants of Sydney seashores', in which she recommended keeping sea horses in a salt-water tank.

"[14] In 1931 she told a Sunday Sun[clarification needed] reporter that she wanted to see a course of lectures on domestic radio and electricity established in girls' schools and technical colleges.

She persuaded employers to take on some of her trainees, as one of them later recalled: During the Depression I joined Mrs Mac's electrical school in Phillip Street.

[32] In 1939 McKenzie established the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps (WESC) in her Clarence Street rooms – known affectionately as "Sigs".

"[35] Despite her suggestion being dismissed, some time later McKenzie and six trainees were provided third-class train tickets to Melbourne to meet with the Naval Board for testing.

[18] In early January 1941, Commander Newman, the Navy's Director of Signals and Communications, visited the WESC headquarters on Clarence Street to test McKenzie's trainees.

From this initial intake of 14, the WRANS ranks expanded to some 2,600 by the end of the war, representing about 10 per cent of the entire Royal Australian Naval force at the time.

Violet McKenzie helped with rehabilitation after the war, keeping her school open for as long as there was a need for instruction in wireless signalling.

In the postwar years, she trained men from the merchant navy, pilots in commercial aviation, and others needing the trade qualification known as a "signaller's ticket".

In 1948, a reporter from Sky Script visited the school and described the scene, and diversity of the students: At a table in a corner recently there were six elementary trainees: One was a Chinese quartermaster, another a half-Burmese.

In another corner there's an ANA commander preparing for his 20-word-a-minute exam: an English ship's wireless officer...an ex-RAF Wing-Commander...an Indian Navy man... [and] groups of airline 'types' also on the job.

[34]McKenzie told a journalist that, after the war, "All the airmen came back and wanted to join Qantas, but they needed to build up their Morse speed and learn to use the modern equipment.

One of the ex-RAAF airmen who retrained for a civilian career with McKenzie wrote: Being unemployed, we spent almost all of each weekday at the school, so if a tuition fee had been applicable, Mrs Mac would have earned a tidy sum of money.

It would be true to say that a great number of the pilots whose futures were finally fulfilled in airlines in Australia owe a deal to Mrs Mac...

[43]Famous aviators who trained for their wireless ticket at McKenzie's school include Patrick Gordon Taylor and Cecil Arthur Butler.

McKenzie also trained Mervyn Wood, later Commissioner of Police in New South Wales, and the principals of the Navigation Schools at both the Melbourne and Sydney Technical Colleges.

The Sands Directory indicates that she moved her operation briefly to No 6 Wharf at Circular Quay in 1953, before retiring to her home at Greenwich Point in 1954.

She also sent him several gifts over the years including shells (for his daughter) that airmen would collect across the Pacific on her request[10] and a boomerang which had been brought to her from Central Australia by an airline pilot.

[1] In 1980 a plaque celebrating her "skills, character and generosity" was unveiled at the Missions to Seamen Mariners' Church, Flying Angel House.

[1] Captain Cook Cruises named a Richardson Devine Marine built ferry that operates on Sydney Harbour Florence Violet McKenzie in 2015.

[citation needed] In September 2023, a park adjacent to the shopping centre in Campbell, Australian Capital Territory, was named in her honour.

In May 1977, after a stroke paralysed her right side and made her wheelchair reliant, McKenzie moved to the nearby Glenwood Nursing Home in the suburb of Greenwich.

At her funeral service, held at the Church of St Giles in Greenwich, 24 serving WRANS formed a Guard of Honour.

Amongst the memories recorded therein is a statement McKenzie made two days before she died: "...it is finished, and I have proved to them all that women can be as good as, or better than men.

Violet McKenzie and husband Cecil McKenzie c1935
The Wireless Shop
Miss F.V. Wallace, electrical engineer
McKenzie working with the wireless radio c1922
The rooms of the Electrical Association for Women, c1936. McKenzie sitting at the piano
Dressed in the practical green uniforms designed by McKenzie, Corps members spell out W E S C in flag semaphore .
Mrs McKenzie with overseas naval personnel, c1953