Birdseye was a pioneer of transport services in South Australia, legendary as a bus driver and mechanic on outback unsealed roads, and renowned for her concern for people in outback communities.

Sylvia Birdseye began driving tray-top Buick and Studebaker sedans on the Adelaide to Mannum route of Alfred Birdseye's transport company in 1921 at the age of 19. She shared driving duties with Alfred's daughter Gladys Birdseye. In 1923 she married Alfred's son Sydney, and in 1926 largely pioneered and maintained the Eyre Peninsula Motor Service which linked otherwise isolated towns and homesteads from Adelaide to Port Augusta and later on to Port Lincoln and Streaky Bay. For townships like Cleve, Kimba and far-west Ceduna, she provided a lifeline.

For almost 40 years Birdseye drove 3 200 kilometres a week, much of this at night while her passengers slept. When her two children were young, they travelled with her. 'Send it by Birdseye' became a household phrase on Eyre Peninsula recognising their reliability in delivering goods on time, and at a fraction of the cost of other modes of transport, on hazardous roads subject to flooding, dust storms, bushfires, kangaroos and straying stock. Sylvia would make detours to drop off urgently needed medicine and on one occasion blood for an immediate transfusion. Daisy Bates was one of her regular customers.

One of the few occasions on which Sylvia's bus failed to arrive on time was when record floods hit Eyre Peninsula in 1946. The Birdseye Bus was bogged 15 kilometres south of Whyalla and took eight days to reach Port Lincoln. During that time Sylvia showed remarkable resourcefulness and concern for her 30 passengers and made an alternative route through scrub, spinifex and sand.

Usually dressed in overalls or jodhpurs, Birdseye's determination and endurance were legendary. She was able to sleep on top of the luggage on the roof covered by a tarpaulin or lying down on the running-board strapped in, during a relief driver's shift. She had to be able to do her own repairs en route and could change a heavy vehicle tyre in four minutes.

In 1954 she continued the bus service after her husband died. On 8 August 1962 she was preparing to drive to Port Lincoln when she suffered a stroke and died the following day. Sylvia's achievements are recognised around Australia and she was dubbed 'Grandmother Queen of the Open Road.'

Achievements commemorated in various ways:

1965; Memorial cairn was unveiled on Eyre Highway near the Iron Knob turnoff

1975: Gary Atkins wrote and recorded Ballad of Sylvia Birdseye in a long playing record Nothin' else around Nairne, S. Aust. : W. Recordings

1993: Transport SA established the Sylvia Birdseye Undergraduate Scholarship for Women studying civil engineering at the University of South Australia

2001: Streaky Bay Museum restored a Straight Eight Nash Car used by Sylvia Birdseye for the Adelaide to Streaky Bay passenger run

2002: Cowell to Elliston road was named the Birdseye Highway, the first South Australian highway to be named after a woman.

2002: Birdseye Lane was named in Canberra, as part of a move to tell the story of the people who built Australia

Harry, Ellinor. 'Mrs Sylvia Birdseye' in Personalities remembered, transcript of a talk on 5CL radio on 31 October 1971

Nicol, Stuart. Bullock tracks and bitumen, Adelaide: Royal Automobile Association of South Australia, 1978

Spriggs, Laurel (ed). Cleve on the Yadnarie Plains, Cleve, SA: Cleve Centenary Committee 1979

200 Australian women

Australian dictionary of biography online