little but her record-breaking flights rather than more recent events in her life. Peggy Kelman, the Australian aviator who had met Batten in the 1930s, later described conversations in which Batten admitted to being dominated by her mother. Kelman also flew a light aircraft with Batten as a passenger, and offered her the controls; Batten refused. She ended up staying in Australia for nearly three months, travelling across the country at the expense of Qantas and being hosted for free. Eventually, tired from her visit, she asked for a flight to Fiji to recuperate before going to the United States. There she did a tour at the behest of the Ninety-Nines, an association of female pilots, before returning to Tenerife in October. For the next few years, Batten made occasional trips to England; she was an advocate of the Concorde supersonic airliner, having viewed the prototype back in 1969 and longed to fly in it to New Zealand. She made further visits to see its progress and wrote to newspapers in support of the project. Buoyed by the public response to the end of her seclusion, she loaned her papers and memorabilia to the RAF museum at Hendon for the purpose of establishing an archive although much material relating to her personal life, particularly correspondence with her family, and also men with whom she had relationships was filtered out. She also commenced writing her memoirs, which she titled Luck and the Record Breaker, intended for publication after her death. In April 1977 she was guest of honour at the opening of the Aviation Pioneers Pavilion at Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT). Acquaintances were startled at her appearance at this time; her hair had been dyed blonde and she appeared underweight. While in New Zealand, she became ill and stayed with the director of the MOTAT. The director, in the belief she had limited funds, sought financial relief from the government. As a result, a grant of NZ$1,000 was granted along with a weekly state pension of NZ$46. However, unknown to anyone, she actually had enough assets to provide a comfortable standard of living. She later stayed with family before returning to Tenerife before the end of the year. Batten was soon contacted by Robert Pooley, of Airlife Publishing, who wanted to republish her 1938 book My Life. She refused to update it, wanting to have her memoirs published