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Peggy Kelman
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Margaret Mary Kelman, OBE (6 April 1909 – 23 December 1998) was an Australian pioneer .


Personal life
Kelman was born as Margaret Mary McKillop in in 1909, her father was the Irish nationalist politician , and her mother, Rose (née Dalton) McKillop was from Orange, Australia. Her father died in 1909, the year of her birth. Her mother returned to Australia and Peggy was educated at , as well as in France and England.

On 5 November 1936 she married, in London, Colin Kelman, an Australian farmer.

Colin and Peggy Kelman then returned to Australia continued as graziers both in Moree, New South Wales and Julia Creek, Queensland; the couple had 5 children.

Her husband died on 17 January 1964. After his death, she moved to .

Peggy McKillop Kelman died in 1998 in , , aged 89. She is buried with her husband in Buderim Cemetery. Her headstone has a depiction of a small plane and the words "Wings forever folded".

She was a devout .


Aviation career
Kelman began flying training in 1931 at the Aero Club of NSW and gained her A licence (now called private pilot licence) in 1932, followed by a commercial pilot licence in 1935.

Her first and only paid job was flying for Nancy Bird Walton, in western NSW in 1935. While barnstorming near Moree, NSW, Kelman met a young grazier with his own aeroplane, his name was Colin Kelman.

After their marriage in London, Peggy and her husband bought a used twin-engined light aircraft, a Monospar, and decided to fly home to Australia. That adventure began 19 December 1936. They flew by way of France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Burma, Malaya, Java, Timor, Darwin and Moree and arrived home on 15 January 1937.

Kelman only ever claimed one flying record; she said she was the first and only pilot to fly from England to Australia while pregnant. She owned many aircraft including a Percival, an , a , a Beech Staggerwing then one of the first Cessna 182s in 1957. Kelman flew these aircraft to town to do her shopping and to social days on neighbouring properties. Age did not stop her; in her 80s, she went to the Oshkosh Air Show in , toured the US, went twice to the and revisited places where she'd been a schoolgirl in Britain, France and Italy (on one trip to the Antarctic, Peggy persuaded Dick Smith to take her by helicopter to land on the ice).


Aviation organisations
Kelman joined the Australian Women Pilots' Association in 1951, serving as its Queensland president, then Federal president from 1974 to 1976. She joined the international women pilots' association, The Ninety Nines, and became Australian governor of that organisation.


Honours
On 3 June 1978, Kelman was appointed an OBE in Australia "For service to aviation in Queensland, particularly in the promotion of women in aviation."

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