Betty Sale (1905-1976) won the Tasmanian State Championship in 1934, 1935 and 1936. She also worked as a car saleswoman in Hobart.
In 1939, London reported: “Betty Sale, pretty Tasmanian brunette, will soon leave England for Finland, where she will drive an ambulance behind the Mannerheim Line. With twenty-three English society girls, she volunteered for the job because she wanted to do something for the brave Finns.”
Betty volunteered for First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Service (F.A.N.Y.), conveying refugees and casualties to hospitals by ambulance in Finland’s harsh weather. Back in England, as a corporal, she worked during bombings in Plymouth, writing to her brother: “Bombs were dropping all around us, fires are raging, debris everywhere and huge holes around us. When we had got all the live ones, we went and collected dead bodies.”
Betty was awarded an MBE and the Winter War Medal for Civilians from Finland Government 1939-40.
MCK142 Published The Age 29 August 1935
Featured in "Newsworthy: Melbourne in photographs 1933-1936" exhibition at East Melbourne Library, October to December 2023. Exhibition caption by project volunteer, Fiona Collyer.