Featured Collection Item – Jean Batten ‘Hine-o-te-Rangi’
Friday, 14 October 2016
Jean Batten was and remains New Zealand’s greatest aviator. Famous the world over for her heroic solo flights, she garnered many names ‘the Garbo of the skies’ and in closer reference to home ‘Hine o te Rangi’ ‘daughter of the skies’.
A life of public fame and adoration followed by obscurity in death, Jean was born Jane Gardner Batten on 15 September 1909 in Rotorua. Her ambition to fly developed early in age and coincided with the emerging tradition for long distance, record breaking flights that were making worldwide and headline news during the late 1920s.
The mid 1930s heyday
After two failed attempts to fly from England to Australia in 1933, Jean successfully completed a return journey in May 1934. While this wasn’t a first or record breaking attempt, Jean’s gender and endearing good looks captured hearts and huge media attention, setting her off on a journey of fame and achievement which she would continue to work to her benefit. Strategically keeping herself in front of the public eye, Jean embarked on extensive tours of Australia and New Zealand. During these tours Batten was accompanied by her mascot, a black kitten named Buddy.
Achievement and attention
In November 1935 she became the first woman to fly herself across the South Atlantic.
In October 1936 she went a step further, cementing her place in aviation history by making the first ever direct flight from England to New Zealand. After 24 landings, plus takeoffs combined with days of flying and hours of sleep deprivation, Jean was left physically and mentally exhausted. On landing in New Zealand a celebration tour was planned but eventually called off in Christchurch due to exhaustion. In February 1937 she returned to Australia and a few months later she completed her last long distance flight, from Australia to England.
From a life lived in the public eye to obscurity
For the rest of her life Batten drifted in and out of the public view. Despite rumoured love affairs she never married, and instead chose to travel the world in much the same way that she began – with her mother at her side. After the loss of her mother in Spain in 1966, Jean travelled and lived alone – her solitary life reflecting the flights that made her famous.
Tenerife acted as her base of travel for many years, leaving there in early 1982 and after travelling and staying with her publisher and his wife in England, flew to Majorca.
For a number of years Jeans’ whereabouts was a mystery, until September 1987 when it was revealed that she had died in Majorca on 22 November 1982. She had been bitten by a dog, and after refusing treatment had died needlessly from a pulmonary abscess. On 22 January 1983 Jean Batten was buried in a paupers’ mass grave.
