Maie Casey (1891–1983)

Ethel Marian "Maie" Sumner Casey, née Ryan, was born in Melbourne, Australia, a daughter of Sir Charles Snodgrass Ryan, a surgeon, and his wife Alice Elfrida Sumner. Her childhood was peopled by gifted artistic and professional relatives including her aunt Ellis Rowan, cousin Janet, Lady Clarke, and the Le Soeuf brothers. She
was educated at home by a governess and in 1907, was sent to boarding school in England, St. George’s School, Ascot. She then attended a finishing school in Paris and returned to Melbourne in 1910. To her disappointment, her father refused to allow her to go to university. In England at the outbreak of World War I, Maie volunteered for work at (Sir) Douglas Shields’s Hospital for Wounded Officers and then with Vera Deakin’s Australian Wounded and Missing Inquiry Bureau. In 1926, she married a fellow Australian, Richard Gardiner Casey (later Baron Casey) with whom she had two children. The family moved back to Australia in 1931, settling in Canberra. Her husband was elected to the federal parliament and rose to ministerial rank. Maie Casey painted and took art classes. In England in 1937 for the coronation of King George V, both Caseys had their first experience of flying and, on their return home, took lessons and earned their pilot's licenses. They bought a Percival Vega Gull, and laid out an airstrip at Edrington, their property at Berwick, outside Melbourne. In 1940, Prime Minister Robert Menzies’ sent Casey as Ambassador to the USA. Maie became a popular hostess in Washington and furnished the legation with Australian timbers, fabrics, and paintings. When Casey was appointed British minister of state in Cairo in 1942, she threw herself into war work, visiting the wounded and traveling with a mobile hospital. Casey was appointed Governor of Bengal, India, in 1944-1945, bringing Maie new duties, which she ably fulfilled.
Back in Melbourne in 1946, as her husband pursued his political career, Maie Casey found herself in demand as a public speaker and continued to paint and to fly small planes. In 1954, she was made a member of the Ninety-Nines, an association of American women pilots founded by Amelia Earhart. In October 1953 she flew her Miles Messenger in Australia’s first all-woman air race. That year, she began her literary career when a book on which she had collaborated, Early Melbourne Architecture, was published.

Her account of her ancestors, An Australian Story, 1837-1907, was published in 1962; a book of her poems with illustrations by Frances Burke appeared the following year. In 1965, she collaborated with Margaret Sutherland on the creation of a one-act opera, The Young Kabbarli. Her memoir Tides and Eddies appeared in 1966. Lady Casey was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1979.