Florence Violet McKenzie

Florence Violet McKenzie OBE , affectionately known as Mrs Mac, was Australias first female electrical engineer, founder of the Womens Emergency Signalling Corps and lifelong promoter for technical education for women. She campaigned successfully to have some of her female trainees accepted into the allmale Navy, thereby originating the Womens Royal Australian Naval Service . Some 12,000 servicemen passed through her signal instruction school in Sydney, acquiring skill in Morse code and visual signalling .

Florence Violet McKenzie was born Florence Violet Granville onSeptember 1890 in Melbourne, although before her marriage to Cecil McKenzie at the age of 34, she was known as Violet Wallace. Other sources cite 1892 as her birth year. Wallace was her stepfather Georges surname he was a commercial traveller. When Violet was an infant, the family moved to Austinmer, south of Sydney.

Source: Wikipedia