Florence Violet McKENZIE OBE
 Florence Violet McKenzie was Australia's first female
electrical engineer. She set up her own electrical
contracting business in 1918, and apprenticed herself to it,
in order to meet the requirements of the Diploma in
Electrical Engineering at Sydney Technical College.
Her great enthusiasm was the new medium of radio, and in
1922 she was the first Australian woman to take out an
amateur radio operator's license. Through the 1920s
and 1930s, her Wireless Shop in the Royal Arcade - 'the
oldest radio shop in town' - was renowned amongst Sydney
radio experimenters and hobbyists.
There were other achievements:
-
founding The Wireless Weekly in
1922,
-
establishing the Electrical
Association for Women in 1934,
-
writing the first 'all-electric
cookbook' in 1936,
-
corresponding with Albert
Einstein in the postwar years.
But McKenzie is best known for her extraordinary voluntary
effort during World War II.
-
She established the Women's
Emergency Signalling Corps in 1939, and
-
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).
Meanwhile, some 12,000 servicemen passed through her signal
instruction school at 10 Clarence Street, acquiring
essential skills in morse, visual signalling and
international code. While the training of servicemen
was her war effort, technical training for women was her
great ambition from the start.
Childhood and education
Before her marriage to Cecil McKenzie at the age of 34,
Florence Violet McKenzie was known as Violet Wallace, though
she was born Florence Violet Granville, on 28 September
1890, in Hawthorn, Victoria. Wallace was her
stepfather George's surname; he was a commercial traveller.
When Violet was an infant, the family moved to Austinmer,
south of Sydney.
From a young age, Violet had an independent interest in
electricity and invention. As she recalled in an oral
history interview in 1979:
I used to play about with bells and buzzers and things
around the house. My mother would sometimes say 'Oh, come
and help me find something, it's so dark in this cupboard' –
she didn't have very good eyesight. So I'd get a battery and
I'd hook a switch, and when she opened that cupboard door a
light would come on. I started sort of playing with those
things.
From Thirroul school, Violet won a bursary to study at
Sydney Girls' High School. In 1915 she passed
Chemistry I and Geology I at the University of Sydney, then
approached the Sydney Technical College in Ultimo to enrol
in the Diploma of Electrical Engineering. She later
recounted the extraordinary story of persuading the College
to let her in:
I went down to Technical College and saw the Head there, and
he said, 'Oh, you can't come here and do engineering unless
you're working at it'. I said, 'Well now, suppose I had an
electrical engineering business and I'm working at it, would
that be all right?' He said, 'Yes, if you produce
proof.' So I went back and I had some cards printed
with my name on, and electrical work, and got the paper and
wrote down the ads, and read that a house, way out beyond
Marrickville somewhere, was asking for prices for putting in
electric light and power. I went out there and nobody
else was silly enough to go, so they gave me the job.
It was about a mile from the end of the tram line. I went
back to Tech and took my card down and showed them the
contract for the job, and they said, 'All right, you can
start.'
In December 1923, Florence Violet Wallace graduated from the
Sydney Technical College. Her Diploma – the first of
its kind awarded in Australia to a woman – is held in the
collection of the Powerhouse Museum.
Electrical work, supplier of radio parts, publisher,
experimenter
Throughout her studies, Violet worked as an electrical
contractor, installing electricity in private houses, such
as that of politician Archdale Parkhill in Mosman, and in
factories and commercial premises, including the Standard
Steam Laundry on Dowling Street, Woolloomooloo.
Violet McKenzie with wireless
c1922 - courtesy of the Ex-Wrans Association NSW
In 1922 Miss Wallace opened The Wireless Shop in the Royal
Arcade. Ric Havyatt of the Historical Radio Society of
Australia remembers visiting the shop during his school
days:
It was only a short walk across Hyde Park from Sydney
Grammar School, the Arcade was home to several radio shops.
Miss Wallace's was always crowded, and I seem to remember
her occasionally helping out the penurious with second hand
parts.
McKenzie later said it was schoolboys visiting her shop who
first introduced her to Morse code.
People outside Violet
McKenzie's wireless shop in the Royal Arcade c1928 -
courtesy of the Ex-Wrans Association NSW
Australia's first weekly radio magazine was conceived at
Miss Wallace's Wireless Shop, by McKenzie and three
co-founders. This magazine later morphed into Radio
and Hobbies and later still, Electronics Australia and remained in circulation until
2001. The 1948 call book lists her as VK2FV which
lapsed about 1959. Regaining interest in amateur radio
in 1979, Florence again became 2GA, this time VK2GA, which
she held until her death in 1982.
In 1924 McKenzie became the only female member of the
Wireless Institute of Australia. That same year she
travelled to the United States for business reasons, and in
San Francisco was welcomed at radio 6KGO: 'Miss
Wallace, an electrical engineer from Australia, will now
talk from the studio.' She reportedly used her time on
air to comment on the difference between the tram systems in
San Francisco and those in Sydney.
In 1931 McKenzie recorded in The Wireless Weekly that she
experimented with television as well as radio:
Have a pronounced kink for television work and devote most
of my spare time in experimenting that branch of the
science. Have a deep-rooted conviction that chemistry is
going to provide the solution and am working along those
lines.
Marriage
Cecil Roland McKenzie was a young electrical engineer
employed by the Sydney County Council's Electricity
Undertaking. He too was a radio enthusiast, and one of
Violet's customers. They were married at the Church of
St Philip in Auburn on New Years Eve 1924. They built
a house at 26 George Street, Greenwich, complete with a
wireless room in the attic, and an enormous fish pond in the
front yard. The house remains, but has been
extensively renovated since the McKenzies lived there.
The McKenzies had a mutual interest in tropical fish.
She spoke of heating water electrically to house tropical
fish at home in the early 1920s, and of having given talks
on radio 2FC about tropical fish in the days when she was
doing electrical contracting work:
One of my hobbies used to be tropical fish, it was mostly my
husband's. I used to give talks over the air on 2FC.
I remember going into a restaurant in Bathurst Street.
I was doing a job there and I was hammering away at
something, and the proprietor came up to me and said, 'Hey
missy, will you stop that for a minute.'
So I said, 'Yes, I'm sorry, what's the trouble?' He
said, 'I want to listen to the session coming on, on
tropical fish.' It was my session.
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.
The McKenzies had no children of their own, but sometimes
took in the two sons of Violet's only sibling, Walter
Reginald Wallace, from Melbourne. These boys, Merton
Reginald Wallace and Lindsay Gordon Wallace, later operated
their own radio shop in Prahran, Melbourne.
Technical education for women
In the 1930s, Violet McKenzie turned her attention
increasingly to teaching other women about electricity and
radio. She had observed the need over years of working
in the field herself. In 1925, she told the Australian
Women's Mirror:
'There are such a lot of women experimenters amongst my
customers that I would like to form a Women's Wireless
Club.'
In 1931 she told a Sunday Sun reporter that she wanted to
see a course of lectures on domestic radio and electricity
established in girls' schools and technical colleges.
She took matters into her own hands, opening a Women's Radio
College on Phillip Street in 1932. 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. It was the first time girls were
involved with electrical circuits, Morse and making radio
sets. Later Mrs Mac decided it was time to use our
skills in industry, so she persuaded Airzone Ltd to take one
of us (me) on trial in their radio section. Soon the
others followed from the school, and we started the
component parts section, and we were absorbed into many
other sections.
McKenzie believed that electricity could save women from
domestic drudgery. She wrote:
'To see every woman
emancipated from the "heavy" work of the household by the
aid of electricity is in itself a worthy object.'
To
this end she founded the Electrical Association for Women
(EAW) on 22 March 1934 at 170 King Street, later moving to 9
Clarence Street. The purpose was educational rather
than commercial, as a 1936 advertisement for the association
makes clear.
Afternoon-tea time at the
Electrical Association for Women's rooms, Violet McKenzie at
piano c1936
courtesy of the Ex-Wrans Association NSW
By 1936, McKenzie had sold the Wireless Shop, and was busy
at the Electrical Association for Women. She gave
electric cooking demonstrations in the EAW kitchen, which
was fitted out with show electrical appliances by the Sydney
County Council. She compiled the EAW Cookery Book,
Australia's first 'all-electric' cookery book, which ran
into seven editions and remained in print until 1954.
Headquarters of the
Electrical Association for Women at the corner of Clarence
and Grosvenor streets 1936
Electrical safety for children
In August 1936, McKenzie was invited by the state
government’s Electricity Advisory Committee to join a panel
"to consider the practicability of preparing suitable
literature of an educational nature, preferably illustrated,
for circulation throughout the schools in the State" on the
subject of electrical safety. The letter from the
Acting Secretary of the committee noted that McKenzie had
‘for some time past been engaged on the preparation of a
pamphlet having a similar design and had endeavoured to
cooperate with the Education Department in this connection.’
In 1937, the Electrical Association for Women published The
Electric Imps, a children’s book written and illustrated by
its Director, Mrs F.V. McKenzie, and described as presenting
‘The story of electricity, simply told, with the object of
educating the youthful mind in its safe use.’ Its
contents also appeared in the School Magazine and The Sun
newspaper.
Pages from book The Electric
Imps 1937
Wartime initiatives
As World War II loomed, McKenzie saw that with her
qualifications and teaching skills she could make a valuable
contribution. She foresaw a military demand for people
with skills in wireless communications. As she told a
reporter in 1978:
'When Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich and said
'Peace in our time', I began preparing for war.'
In July 1938, McKenzie was one of 80 women in attendance at
the inaugural meeting of the Australian Women's Flying Corps
held at the Feminist Club of New South Wales at 77 King
Street. McKenzie was appointed treasurer and
instructor in Morse code to the organisation, which was
later known as the Australian Women's Flying Club.
In 1939 McKenzie established the Women's Emergency
Signalling Corps (WESC) in her Clarence Street rooms.
Her original idea was to train women in telegraphy so that
they could replace men working in civilian communications,
thereby freeing those skilled men up to serve in the war.
This she accomplished: by the time war broke out, 120 women
had been trained to instructional standard.
Three members of the Women's
Emergency Signalling Corps,
l-r Violet McKenzie, Pat McInnes, Esme Kura Murrell c1940
Women's Emergency Signalling
Corps members at Castle Hill c1939 - courtesy of the
Ex-Wrans Association NSW
But it quickly became apparent that men in the services
urgently needed training in wireless communications. A
newspaper article in the 1970s described the moment when
McKenzie realised that she and her female trainees at the
WESC could train servicemen directly:
Early in the war, one young would-be pilot tried to enlist
but was refused because he didn't know Morse code … By sheer
coincidence he walked past the Women's Emergency Signalling
Corps on Clarence Street and heard the sounds of Morse
signalling.
'It was just a room full of women,' remembered Mrs McKenzie,
'but he walked up to me and said 'Will you teach me Morse
code?' I just heaved a big sigh because I saw a whole
world opening up in front of me. Then I knew what we
could do. We could train girls to train the men.
It was wonderful, because I'd thought we could only do
things like relieving in the post office.'
Soon the premises at 9 Clarence Street became overcrowded,
so McKenzie moved the operation to an old wool store at 10
Clarence Street, where for the next decade the WESC occupied
the first and second floors. Sometimes intelligence
personnel would appear at the school with complaints from
guests in the pub next door, who thought a spy operation was
at work when they heard Morse code through the walls each
evening.
Noreen Dudgeon of Rose Bay
instructs US Naval personnel in visual signalling, Sydney
c1943
Some 12,000 servicemen and recruits made their way up the
steep wooden stairs for instruction at the bustling WESC
school during the war, as McKenzie later recounted:
The Army sent lorry loads of soldiers to have early training
in Morse before going to the Middle East, the RAAF sent
several groups of servicemen in uniform, with their own
instructor, to use our equipment. The Royal Indian
Navy sent their Indian communication ratings. Many RAN
musterings came to the signalling school to improve their
signalling. Scores of American servicemen attended the
school, sometimes with their own instructor, but mostly to
join our classes. More than forty police officers
attended the school in their spare time to reach the
necessary standard for enlisting as pilots in the RAAF.
McKenzie ran the school without any government grant or
allocation of accommodation by the services. The women
of the WESC each gave one shilling per week towards the
rent, but no fees were ever charged for tuition:
instruction of servicemen was a voluntary effort on the part
of McKenzie and the WESC.
To the thousands of men and women who trained at 'Sigs' on
Clarence Street, Florence Violet McKenzie was known
affectionately as 'Mrs Mac'.
Female telegraphists enter the auxiliary services
McKenzie campaigned energetically to have some of her female
trainees accepted into the Air Force and Navy as
telegraphists. She encountered a great deal of
official resistance. In 1940 she wrote to the Minister
of the Navy, WM (Billy) Hughes:
'I would like to offer the services of our Signalling Corps,
if not acceptable as telegraphists then at least as
instructors.'
Her suggestion was dismissed. She travelled to
Melbourne to meet with the Naval Board, and invited them to
send an officer to test the ability of her trainees.
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.
Finding they were highly proficient, he recommended the Navy
admit them. Hughes still took some convincing.
But the urgent need for trained telegraphists prevailed, and
on 21 April a Navy Office letter authorised the entry of
women into the Navy. This was the beginning of the
Women's Royal Australian Naval Service – the WRANS.
The minister's condition was that
'No publicity be accorded this break with tradition'.
On 28 April 1941, McKenzie accompanied 14 of her WESC
trainees to HMAS Harman in Canberra, where they quietly
became the first members of the WRANS. The women were
dressed in their green WESC uniform which had been designed
by their teacher Mrs Mac – it was several months before a
female Navy uniform was ready. 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.
All told, McKenzie trained about 3,000 women, one-third of
whom went into the services. Many others remained at
the Clarence Street school as instructors.
In May 1941, the Air Force appointed McKenzie as an honorary
flight officer of the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air
Force, so she could legitimately instruct Air Force
personnel. This was the only official recognition
McKenzie received during the war for her efforts.
Postwar wireless training
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 a signaller's
ticket. In 1948, a Sky Script reporter paid a visit to
the school and described the scene, and the diversity of
students:
At a table in a corner recently there were six elementary
trainees: One was a Chinese quartermaster, another a
half-Burmese. Two were Americans, one, an aircraft
skipper down from New Guinea to get his wireless ticket; and
the other chap a ship's officer with the same objective.
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.
Violet McKenzie with overseas
naval personnel c1953 - courtesy of the Ex-Wrans Association
NSW
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.' The Department of Civil Aviation fitted
out a room at the school with transmitters, receivers and
radio compass so that pilots could train for their wireless
ticket at the school. From 1948, McKenzie held a First
Class Flight Radio Telephony Operator License. AR Gray
was one of many ex-RAAF airmen who retrained for a civilian
career with McKenzie in this period. He 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. That, of
course, was not her way of doing things. She required
no payment for the training she provided, and I suspect that
she was quite out of pocket over the whole affair.
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.
There was no other school operating in Sydney at the time,
providing Morse training to potential airline pilots, and no
other school then or thereafter giving such training
completely free of charge.
Famous aviators who trained for their wireless ticket at
McKenzie's school include Patrick Gordon Taylor and Cecil
Arthur Butler. McKenzie also trained Merv Wood, later
Commissioner of Police in New South Wales, and the
principals of the Navigation Schools at both the Melbourne
and Sydney Technical Colleges.
Given that Violet McKenzie had no income after she closed
her shop in the mid-1930s, running the signal school on a
fee-free basis for a decade and a half must have entailed
considerable personal sacrifice. Her husband's salary
from the Sydney County Council may have been enough to
support them both while he was alive. She may have
saved money during her time as a retailer. She may
have received an inheritance when her parents both died in
1933, though they were of modest means. But McKenzie
appears to have made ends meet over long years of voluntary
service largely by being frugal and self-sacrificing.
Correspondence with Einstein
In early 1949 McKenzie started writing to Albert Einstein.
Her first letter to him wished him a speedy recovery from
recent illness. Two of her letters are held in the
Einstein archives in Jerusalem. It is clear from the
second letter that he wrote back to her at least once.
Some accounts claim that McKenzie corresponded regularly
with Einstein for as long as 15 years before his death in
1955, but the documentary record suggests such reports
exaggerate the extent of the correspondence.
McKenzie herself said that she and Einstein corresponded for
some years.
He was very interested in Australia and his favourite
daughter, she was really a step-daughter, was terribly fond
of shells. And I used to get my marine boys to bring
me in shells from the islands, and the air boys, they'd take
a big tin of shells over to the States for me.
It's evident from one of her letters that she sent him a
boomerang which had been brought to her from Central
Australia by an airline pilot. She wrote 'Some of your
mathematical friends might like to plot its flight!'
There are other reports that she sent him a didgeridoo, and
a recording of didgeridoo music when he replied that he
couldn't work out how to play the instrument.
Awards and honours
 In 1950, McKenzie was awarded an OBE for voluntary services
to the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps. In 1957 she was elected a Fellow of the
Australian Institute of Navigation. In 1964 she became
Patron of the Ex-WRANS Association. In 1979 she was
made a Member of the Royal Naval Amateur Radio Society.
In 1980 a plaque celebrating her 'skills, character and
generosity' was unveiled at the Missions to Seamen Mariners'
Church, Flying Angel House.
The Oceania DX Contest
The historic Oceania DX (“OCDX”) Contest is one of the
longest-running contests in the amateur radio calendar.
It is an annual competition between radio amateurs to make
contacts on the HF (shortwave) bands, specifically DX (long
distance) contacts with stations in Oceania.
The Florence McKenzie (Mrs Mac) Award is awarded to the YL
(“young lady”) Single Operator entrant from Oceania with the
highest combined score in the Phone and CW sections.
Retirement
According to a People magazine profile of McKenzie written
in January 1953, McKenzie received an unceremonious notice
from the owners of 10 Clarence Street to quit the premises.
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.
McKenzie wrote that she closed the school when the airlines
established their own school and the government added a
signals training section to the Navigation School at the
Technical College. She continued to help the
occasional pupil with special difficulties at her home.
Final years
Violet McKenzie was nine years older than her husband Cecil,
but she outlived him by 23 years. After his death in
1958, she shared her house for a time with Cecil's sister
Jean, a primary school teacher.
In May 1977, after a stroke paralysed her right side and
confined her to a wheelchair, McKenzie moved to the nearby
Glenwood Nursing Home.
Violet McKenzie, possibly at
unveiling of plaque at Mission to Seamen Mariners Church
c1980
courtesy of the Ex-Wrans Association NSW
She died peacefully in her sleep on 23 May 1982. At
her funeral service, held at the Church of St Giles in
Greenwich, 24 serving WRANS formed a Guard of Honour.
McKenzie was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium.
Funeral of Violet McKenzie,
Greenwich May 1982 - courtesy of the Ex-Wrans Association
NSW
The June 1982 edition of the newsletter of the Ex-WRANS
Association was devoted to their former teacher and patron.
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.'
Honour Roll of Women
In 2001 she was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of
Women.
The Florence McKenzie Chair
The Australian National University (ANU) College of
Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics is embarking on an
ambitious agenda to reimagine engineering and computing to
launch their society into the middle of the 21st Century.
They are bringing non-traditional skills to engineering and
computing to put people in the centre of delivering
solutions to global challenges.
The Florence McKenzie Chair is part of this agenda and is
proudly named in honour of Florence Violet McKenzie (née
Wallace), Australia's first female electrical engineer.
Florence McKenzie exemplifies the pioneering spirit and
lifelong pursuit of inclusive use of technology in society
this Chair represents, and we proudly acknowledge and
celebrate Florence Violet McKenzie and her legacy.
Through the establishment of this Chair, we begin the task
of redefining what it means to exist in a technologically
driven world and how to drive fit-for-purpose technological
development.
The Inaugural McKenzie Chairholder is Professor Genevieve
Bell.
Canberra park honours signals pioneer
In July 2023 a park in Campbell ACT was named after 'Mrs
Mac' to recognise her dedication to service including the
creation of the Women's Royal Australian Naval
Service(WRANS).
In late 2022, the local community was encouraged to nominate
names for an existing park area in Campbell.
The theme agreed on by the ACT government was ‘female
Defence personnel’.
From 21 candidate submissions, although only an honorary
WRANS, Mrs McKenzie appeared several times and the ACT Place
Naming Committee selected her name.
Violet McKenzie Park is open to the public and can be found
behind the Campbell shops between White Crescent and Blamey
Place.
Sources:
The Dictionary of Sydney - McKenzie, Violet, by Catherine
Freyne
Victorian Honour Roll of Women
Department of Defence
Oceania DX contest
Australian National University
Radio Girl by David Dufty - The Story of the Extraordinary
Mrs Mac
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