Sylvia Birdseye, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetSylvia Birdseye
(1902-1962) bus driver
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Port Augusta, South Australia, Australia
About Sylvia Birdseye
- Sylvia Birdseye (née Merrill) (1902–1962) was the first woman to hold a commercial bus driving licence in South Australia.
- She initiated a regular mail and passenger service between Adelaide and Eyre Peninsula in 1928.Sylvia Jessie Catherine Merrill was born near Port Augusta on 26 January 1902.
- She was the daughter of Charles De Witt and Elizabeth Ann Merrill.
- Her father was a station-hand.
- She moved to Adelaide in 1921 to work in the office of family friend Alfred Birdseye, who had established South Australia's first motor transport, the Adelaide–Mannum bus.
- She found that driving the buses was more appealing than office work after learning to drive with Alfred's daughter Gladys.
- Three years later she obtained a licence to drive a passenger vehicle, the first woman in South Australia to do so.
- On 23 October 1923, she married Alfred's son Sydney Alick Birdseye, her first dancing partner in Port Augusta.
- After his father sold the Mannum service in 1926, Sydney and Sylvia began a bus service between Adelaide and Port Augusta.
- They later extended services to Port Lincoln, Streaky Bay and Ceduna.Roads on Eyre Peninsula were little more than horse tracks before World War II, not particularly suited to a motor bus of the time.
- Birdseye had a reputation for driving skill and toughness.
- She wore overalls, changed her own tyres, performed most of the maintenance and repairs and waded creek crossings to ensure the bus could cross safely.
- Sylvia continued to operate the service after her husband's death in 1954, and was preparing for a service to Port Lincoln when she suffered a stroke in 1962, and died the next day.
- The Birdseye Highway across Eyre Peninsula between Cowell and Elliston is named in her honour.
- It was the first highway in South Australia to be named for a woman.In 1946, her bus became bogged south of Whyalla, isolated by flood waters for 8 days, with 25 passengers.
- Rations were dropped to the stranded group from an aircraft.
Read more at Wikipedia