Neck tie: Wing Officer Amy Gwendoline Stark, Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force

Plain black rayon tie, with tags on reverse detailing the supplier (Richards) and the material (RAYON).

Amy Gwendoline 'Gwen' Stark, born in Sydney on 3 April 1910, and living in Rose Bay, was inspired by the Australian visit of Amy Johnson in 1930 to join the Australian Women's Flying Club (AWFC) in the late 1930s. She gained her pilot's licence shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, and flew the de Havilland Moth series - the Gypsy, Avian, Hornet, Puss and Tiger Moth.

Upon the declaration of war, the AWFC became affiliated with the NSW branch of the Women's Air Training Corps, and she served as its commandant from 1940. She was one of the first women appointed to a position in the Women's Australian Auxiliary Air Force in March 1941 and the first officer appointed to New South Wales where she was posted Assistant Section Officer under service number 351010.

Stark soon promoted to Section Officer on 12 August 1941 and then Flight Officer on13 November 1941 when she served in Headquarters Training Group, Point Piper and was tasked with selecting new recruits. In December 1941 she spent a brief period at RAAF Headquarters in Melbourne, where she was promoted to Squadron Officer, before being assigned to the North Eastern Area Headquarters at Townsville as Area Staff Officer in July 1942.

Squadron Officer Stark was assigned to Number 2 Training Group at Wagga, New South Wales on 16 December 1943, where she embarked on a programme of visiting air bases across eastern Australia to check on the welfare of airwomen. On 1 January 1945 she was promoted to Wing Officer, one of only four such officers in the WAAAF. In this capacity and in this position she ended the war.

Postwar, she travelled to Europe and worked with the Berlin Air Lift at a Royal Air Force station in Germany for several months. Whilst in England she met her future husband William Caldwell, a retired bank officer; he returned to Australia with her in January 1949 and in July they were married at 23 July at St Philip’s Anglican Church, Sydney.

In 1964 she became the federal president of the Australian Women's Pilots' Association and was appointed to the Order of the British Empire on 8 June 1968 for her services to aviation. Until well into her 70s she was devoted to the welfare and friendship of the WAAAF Association, aviation and the Girl Guides.

In 1979 she donated a number of 16mm black and white and colour films to the Australian War Memorial. This revealed that as early as 1938 she had been shooting 16 mm Kokakchrome colour film of the Australian Women's Flying Club, the NSW Women's Air Training Corps and the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force- a task she continued throughout the Second World War.