Words: Olive Sukun and Margo Nugent Photos: Supplied by the US Embassy PNG and Manolos Aviation Women take to the Sky
The first recipient of PNG’s new Amelia Earhart Trust scholarship, Deborah Bidang, is using the funds to gain her commercial helicopter licence
Fewer than 700 humans have ever been to space but, of those, fewer than 75 have been women. To have one of those female space pioneers visit PNG – for the second time! – with the four-day tour to Port Moresby and Lae in July 2024 of retired American astronaut Marsha Ivins was a rare opportunity to inspire local women to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education. A veteran of five space missions, Marsha, who is now 73 and retired from space exploration and aerospace engineering, came to PNG to launch a memorial and scholarship named after her countrywoman Amelia Earhart, an American aviator who achieved many first solo flights for women in the 1930s before disappearing over the Pacific Ocean off PNG in 1937 while trying to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. Lae was the last stop for Amelia (who was just shy of her 40th birthday on July 24) and her navigator Fred Noonan before the pair set off on July 2 in a Lockheed Electra twin-engine plane for Howland Island, northeast of Tonga. It is generally presumed they ran out of fuel, crashed into the ocean and died near Howland Island, although no bodies or plane wreckage were ever found. PNG’s Amelia Earhart Memorial and Trust was launched on Amelia’s birthday of July 24, and here we talk to the first scholarship recipient – 29-year-old Lae-based pilot Deborah Bidang – about following in the footsteps of one of her heroes.
VOLUME 41 2025
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