For Hilda McMaugh, like many Australian women of the early 1900s, wartime service offered a new outlook on life.

The nurse from Uralla in northern New South Wales found herself in England after the Armistice and decided to become the first Australian woman to qualify as a pilot.

It was 1919, and Nancy Bird Walton was just four years old at the time.

Hilda McMaugh served in a military hospital in Cairo during World War I. ( Supplied: National Archives of Australia )

London's Sunday Times reported on November 16:

"Miss McMaugh, an Australian lady, after only a month's training, successfully passed her tests yesterday and received the Royal Aero Club's Pilot Certificate. She flew a Centaur 4 machine. "Miss McMaugh has been working as a Red Cross nurse in France attached to the AIF. "It is claimed that she is the first Australian woman to take the certificate, and the first woman in England to pass since the Armistice."

Two months later, the Kalgoorlie Miner reported that she had no plans for flying Down Under:

"She may or may not fly again … all she wants is the credit of being 'No.1' on the list of Australian women pilots."

At the time, McMaugh would not have been permitted to fly in Australia, according to Anne-Marie Conde, senior curator with the National Archives.

"It's extraordinary that she would go to that trouble and expense and not be able to do anything with it," she said.

"But maybe she saw it as a glorious adventure, something she would never be able to do again, so she thought, 'Right, I'm just going to do this' — and she did."

Hilda McMaugh was the first Australian woman to earn a pilot's certificate. ( Supplied: National Archives of Australia )

Wartime adventures over

McMaugh had also learned to drive, and records at the National Archives show she worked as a chauffer in London.

"What these women did have was a taste of independence, and in those times it would have been absolutely marvellous," Ms Conde said.

"To have been relied upon and almost mythologised for their heroism would have been an amazing experience.

"All the courage and resourcefulness and the independence they needed to be Army nurses would have been something they carried into their civilian lives."

With her wartime adventures over, including three years as a nurse in Cairo, McMaugh returned home to continue her nursing duties and contributed much to her local community.

She has been credited with founding Uralla's only private hospital — St Elmo's in 1923 — which was officially opened by Major General Charles Cox, who by then had been elected to the Senate.

What remains of the former hospital is now a private residence. ( ABC New England: Jennifer Ingall )

Her way or the highway

The Armidale Express reported on February 23, 1923:

"General Cox said it gave him great pleasure to come to Uralla that day to open this hospital. "He had known Sister McMaugh on active service, and considered there was no woman in Australia better fitted to take charge. "She was well thought of by both officers and soldiers on active service, and stood high in the estimation of the Army doctors."

"I hear she was a formidable woman, and it was 'my way or the highway' at the hospital," said author Margaret Skeel, who is researching the McMaugh story for a new book.

It won't be a biography, but Ms Skeel has heard some amazing tales attached to McMaugh and believed they were ideal for a fictional heroine.

One such tale involved a swimming pool, which today is overgrown with weeds, but in its heyday would have "looked like something out of the Great Gatsby", Ms Skeel said.

In its heyday, the pool could have been likened to something out of the Great Gatsby. ( ABC New England: Jennifer Ingall )

It was built by McMaugh for local schoolchildren and paid for with the winnings of a bet on Old Rowley, which won the 1940 Melbourne Cup at odds of 100-1.

"That bought the materials; the labour came from husbands whose babies had been delivered by Hilda during the Depression who couldn't pay cash," Ms Skeel said.

'History has been biased'

Over the years a tennis court and extensive gardens were added to the site by McMaugh until her retirement in 1950.

The hospital was then sold as a hotel; it is now a private residence.

Upon her death in 1981, McMaugh left money to the Uralla community for the creation of services for the elderly, leading to the creation of McMaugh Gardens Retirement Home.

Little remains as a reminder of the one-time aviatrix, who some would argue contributed more to Uralla than the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt who is celebrated with an annual festival.

Uralla's main claim to fame is a bushranger, Captain Thunderbolt. ( ABC New England: Jennifer Ingall )

"I like stories of real people, not kings and queens or generals, and I must say history has been biased towards white men," Ms Skeel said.

"There's a lot of really interesting women in the world who have done great things and deserve to have their stories told."