Lorna Byrne (broadcaster)

Lorna Byrne CBE (27 December 1897 – 15 July 1989) was an Australian expert in agriculture, a Major in the Australian Women's Army Service and a radio broadcaster.

Life
Byrne was born in Quirindi in New South Wales. She was the last of ten children and her elder sister Ethel became a notable physician and pathologist. Her parents were Margaret (born Crennan) and James Byrne and they had both been born in New South Wales. Her father was a teacher. She left what is now Maitland Grossmann High School with a scholarship to qualify as a teacher at the University of Sydney. She was one of the first two women to graduate in agricultural science from the University of Sydney in 1921. She had part of her practical training at the (all male) Hawkesbury Agricultural College.

After university she joined the Department of Education and she gave talks and later radio broadcasts. In 1939-40 she was presenting programmes on 2FC which became part of Radio National.

In 1941 she joined the Australian Women's Army Service and in 1942 she became Major Lorna Byne in 1942 when she was an assistant controller and 2nd in command to Sybil Irving who had founded the AWAS. On 27 May 1943 she received the salute as she left headquarters in Melbourne to take up the command in Western Australia.

After a short marriage and some foreign travel she returned to broadcasting in 1953 as "Lorna Byrne". She had a fifteen-minute weekly slot that was titled "Country Women’s Session". The weekly talks continued until 1966 with a late name change to "Farm and Home" from 1964.

Byrne became a CBE in 1980 and died in Mona Vale in 1989.