Australian Dictionary of Biography

Gladys Sandford (1891-1971), motorist, was born on 4 March 1891 at Summer Hill, Sydney, fourth child of Oswald Coates, an English-born commission agent, and his wife Valerie Albine, née Lassau, who came from South Australia. By 1896 the family had moved to Auckland, New Zealand. At the age of 21 Gladys was employed as a schoolteacher at Napier. On 20 June 1912 at St Barnabas's Anglican Church, Mount Eden, she married William Henning, a widower and a motor salesman. She learned to drive and enjoyed tinkering with engines.

When her husband enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1914, Gladys offered her services as a motor driver, but was turned down. She paid her own passage, sailed to Egypt with the Volunteer Sisterhood, and worked as a driver at the Ghaza hospital. Reaching England, she was engaged as a driver by the Motor Transport Section of the N.Z.E.F. on 30 May 1917. She rose to be head lady driver, but contracted influenza and was discharged on 19 January 1919. In 1920 she was appointed M.B.E. Her husband, who had won the Military Cross, had died of wounds in 1918.

Tireless and fearless, Gladys was an attractive woman with fair, curly hair and blue eyes. At St Mark's Church, Darling Point, Sydney, on 3 April 1920 she married Frederick Esk Sandford (d.1929), a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force. They lived in England, India and Egypt. In 1924 she returned to Auckland alone. For many years she had wanted to learn to fly. In December 1925, despite strong opposition, she became the first woman in New Zealand to gain a pilot's licence (no.18).

Forced to support herself, Mrs Sandford worked as a motorcar saleswoman and taught her customers to drive. She was dared to emulate F. E. Birtles' overland trip from Adelaide to Darwin. With a female companion (who could not drive), she left Sydney on 4 March 1927 in a 1926 Essex 6 coach, planning to motor to Perth, Darwin, Adelaide and along the coast to Sydney. 'Their equipment consisted of tinned foods and flour, a frying-pan, a billy and a grid-iron, blankets and a mattress, canvas waterbags, a tomahawk, fencing wire and a wire strainer, a set of bog extractors, a Red Cross outfit, a revolver, and four suitcases of personal luggage. The only spares they carried when they set out were two spark plugs, a coil, and a soldering iron'. Floods and impassable roads necessitated changes to her itinerary. Returning to Sydney on 25 July, she had driven some 10,000 miles (16,093 km) and undertaken running repairs, including re-assembling the engine. On the one occasion she needed help, she short-circuited the Transcontinental telegraph-line to gain the aid of technicians.

In 1929 Sandford settled in Sydney. During World War II she founded and presided over the Women's Transport Corps. By 1940 it had almost 400 members who had to practise military drill, and pass theoretical and practical examinations in driving and maintenance. The unit was soon brought under the umbrella of the National Emergency Services. By day she censored letters for the Department of the Army.

After the war Sandford ran a poultry farm with a female friend for a few years before obtaining a job with the Department of Repatriation. In 1956 she retired. She moved into the War Veterans' Home, Narrabeen, worked at the home's art-union office, took up painting, and enjoyed sea fishing. A vice-president of the Sydney branch of the New Zealand Returned Soldiers' (later Services) Association, she marched on Anzac Day and acted as an unpaid social worker for the association, visiting sick and distressed soldiers and their families. She died on 24 October 1971 at the Repatriation General Hospital, Concord, and was cremated.