Florence Violet McKenzie

Lore & Background

Florence Violet McKenzie, born Violet Wallace in Melbourne, displayed an early interest in electricity and invention. She won a bursary to Sydney Girls' High School, completed her senior year in 1909, and later enrolled at Sydney Teachers' College. After passing Chemistry I and Geology I at the University of Sydney in 1915, she approached Sydney Technical College to enrol in the Diploma of Electrical Engineering. To meet the requirements, she set up her own electrical contracting business in 1918 and apprenticed herself to it. She won the diploma by March 1922, becoming the first woman in Australia to do so.

In 1922 she opened "The Wireless Shop" in Sydney's Royal Arcade, purchasing the stock of the previous vendor. That same year she became the first Australian woman to take out an amateur radio operator's licence (callsign 2GA). She passed the Amateur Operator's Proficiency Certificate in 1925, the first woman to do so, and held her transmitting licence continuously until 1939. After the war, her allocated callsign was VK2FV. She also co-founded The Wireless Weekly in 1922, which later became Electronics Australia.

McKenzie married Cecil Roland McKenzie, a fellow electrical engineer and radio enthusiast, on New Year's Eve 1924. They built a house at Greenwich Point with a wireless room in the attic. Their only child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1926. McKenzie was the only female member of the Wireless Institute of Australia in 1924 and corresponded with Albert Einstein in the postwar years.

Reader's Guide

McKenzie's significance lies in her pioneering role as Australia's first female electrical engineer and her relentless promotion of technical education for women. In the 1930s, she turned her attention to teaching women about electricity and radio, opening a Women's Radio College in 1932. She founded the Electrical Association for Women in 1934, aiming to emancipate women from domestic drudgery through electricity. Her work directly led to the creation of the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) when she campaigned successfully to have her female trainees accepted into the Navy. During her career, some 12,000 servicemen trained at her signal instruction school in Morse code and visual signalling. She also wrote the first "all-electric cookbook" in 1936 and gave electric cooking demonstrations in the EAW kitchen. Her legacy includes breaking gender barriers in engineering and radio, and establishing pathways for women in technical and military communications roles.