Karma 🧁 Is Best Served As A Monument 🗽

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Deborah Lawrie was the first female pilot for a major Australian airline and just two weeks ago a bridge was built in her honour.

But the positioning of the bridge is quite interesting. It was built over the motorway named after the man who denied her a job. 

Flexiana and Froomindi chat Karma and getting your flowers. 

We love chit chatting, so whatever we can't say on air, we put here, In our catchup podcast! Every weekday we bring you a replay of our show and an extended segment just for the podcast (like this one!). 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex
and Frooms catch up podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Listen. I really do need to acknowledge Mickey's hard work
here in the studio. It has been a busy week
for me. That is my only excuse, and therefore I
didn't really get that much time to prepare for the show.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Let's just how many Let's just do a headcount. Since
Mickey has been our producer, how many of Frooms's break
have actually been in Mickey's break. There's a reason why
people say Flex Frooms and Mickey, let's just do a headcount.
Would you say it's half of your breaks?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'd say one third?

Speaker 1 (00:39):
What am I doing your dirty? Their babes, Oh you're
doing you dirty? I hope it. It's like fifty five
forty five, who forty five fifty five?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
It's giving industrialization of the flecs and from show.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's giving. This is how this is people's fear about
if women ran world and just just be like patriarchy.
Why do we have an all woman show and yet
the youngest woman here has been unfairly Anyways, keep it cashing.
What's happening, Micky? What have you prepared for us today? No?
I say this all.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I just wanted to thank you, you know, because I imagine
some people in my position would take all the credit.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
This is true, the producer. Often people go, what do
they actually do? Exactly? Well, now home on, no, no, no,
every now and then I'll use Mickey freaks to bolster
my own But I do my job. Thank you very
much is a boster, some would say.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Now anyway, something that Mickey brought to my attention was
a story from the ABC which I believe it will
be very interesting to our demographic. The title is Australia's
first female pilot at major commercial airline, Deborah Laurie opens
Sydney Airport bridge named in her honor Hut.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
The story is as follows.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
The New Southwal's government has announced the Deborah Laurie Flyover,
part of the Sydney Gateway project, which will open on
November twelfth, to improve access to the domestic terminal and
take pressure off the intersection outside the airport. Captain Lowry,
who's seventy still flies for Virgin And said she was
honored to be recognized as a trailblazer for women in aviation.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
It's difficult to.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Find ways to explain how excited I am about this,
she said, The irony of flying over the top of
reginald Anset Drive makes me smile no more than that laugh.
And why Debra, Because in the late nineteen seventies, Debora
Laurie won a landmark sexual discrimination case allowing her to
work as a pilot for Anset. So Reginald Anset, the
airline owner, had never hired a female pilot. An Anset

(02:30):
appealed all the way to the High Court to try
and stop Captain Laurie, who had flown since she was sixteen,
from working there. What happened Guys an Set loss, Captain
Larry's career in commercial aviation began, and then what happened
to Anset guys redacted. And I thought that was quite
a sad loss of an Australian company. I mean, I
wasn't around for Anset days.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
But yeah, I was going to say, I don't know
anything about an It might have been before my time.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
So I will personally never forget the first that I
heard somebody like talk about women pilots when I was
working at Yundai.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
I didn't know it was Ynda, I didn't know. I
didn't know that I did not know that. Come on
you just knowing.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Ynday Melbourne City, Yunday, let me know. And it's in
South Melbourne. Every day I'd go to work in my
jeep driving from out in my.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Jeeps coming out and this is coming out for the.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
First time, drive my little Tonka truck jeep all the
way down the freeway.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, babes, it was sick. What happened to him?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
I sold it, which is the biggest kept because that
stuff would be expensive. Now is silver Jeep Wrangler a boxy,
boxy car? Pretty sure it could have a soft top roof,
but I never took it off. I never discovered. But
I loved my cars. Huh soft tops, Yeah, they don't eat,
do they.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
You're buying a whole car. Buy a whole car, and
they're not giving you a discount for the soft top.
Not enough.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
So when I was working here and day, I was
like making coffees amongst also selling tint and whatnot. And
remember this man came in with his son and they
were talking about how they got on a plane to
Melbourne earlier that day and that it was a woman
pilot and how they were like, I didn't want to
get on the plane because it was a woman pilot.
And I remember really sitting there, eighteen years old all

(04:23):
the time feeling furious, what is this sexism in the
wild that I'm witnessing. It was like obviously not the
first sex and sexism moment that I'd seen, but in
the workplace it was giving outlandish sexism areas, and it's
just always stayed in my mind. And I've always like
wanted to have a woman pilot, so I could, you know,

(04:45):
experience that. I feel like I don't see that many
women pilots have you? Have you ever seen one? Biki?

Speaker 1 (04:52):
I don't think I'm really looking seeing the pilot.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
For really, I love having a little ganda as I'm
walking off, give him a little lieut thank you for
your service, like if your servants. But it kind of
like I wonder how good it actually is to work
in an industry where you are so clearly not respected,
Like this is a really beautiful moment for her, but
she's seventy, Like for how long did you have to

(05:15):
have to put up with like.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Bloody proven people wrong? Like that would just be exhausting.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, and we don't talk about that like six yet
of bridge, But like I don't know, feels like a
lot of work for a bridge.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
What do you recomplex? Ah, I think it's always a
good time to be given your flowers. I don't think
that there's an even I don't think there's a bad
time for people to acknowledge what you've done. I think
it's kind of like it's exactly what the patriarchy wants
you to think. Like you, as a woman sees another
woman get validated, you're kind of like, ah, but what's
the point. It's like, this is the point, Like there

(05:50):
should be a thousand statues of women who've done exceptional things,
and there isn't. And I think it's incredible. I mean,
it would be frustrating for her to be the first
of many, but I think that's the point. We need
the first, so it isn't frustrating for the next person,
the next person, the next person, and so it isn't
a narrative when we're kind of like, wait, what would
have been the issue? Like, you know, even the fact

(06:11):
that we can think of times where people have how
do I explain this? We know that in the English
language especially, man is neutral, right, Like you hear man,
it's neutral, you hear woman? You hear other, and who
knows how long it's going to take us to get
to a point where you hear woman and you're not
thinking of her in relation to a man either, just

(06:32):
being like, oh sick, it's just a pilot. And in
your head you're picturing a woman. Oh it's a doctor,
and you pictured a woman not the doctor. Oh, Like
it's a trade and you pictured a woman.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Like.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
I think we need more of these instances, and we
need it done in very obnoxious ways. So everybody has
to reckon with how uncomfortable it makes them in an
obnoxious way. So when people say like, oh, she was
the first black person, everyone's like, don't, don't alienate, but
it's like, no, we need the alien It has to
work in people's favor because that's how ostracyite. That's how

(07:04):
being ostracized works. You are othered, but now be othered
because you're exceptional. Don't be othered because you are the
exception to the rule. Cool. Yeah, I'll feel for her.
It'd be so frustrating because think about the people who
now get to profit of what she did on her own,
Like all this stuff she had to do on her own,
had to overcome and now whoever has erected this statue

(07:27):
in her likeness gets to be looked at like some
amazing persons. That's what I mean, Like where were you
when she was in the kitchen cooking? But for real,
it must be done well. I'm excited to take the
bridge really reflection through. You've been listening to the Flex
and Frooms Daily podcast.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
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