She may be closing in on her century, but Anne Lewis remembers the day she took her first solo flight as if it was yesterday. In fact, it was almost eight decades ago, the plane was a Tiger Moth and the place was Maylands, in Perth’s inner-city.
“I was 20 at the time,” she recalls, sitting in her apartment in a retirement village in Perth’s western suburbs. “I did a circuit, then got on the downwind leg and I thought, ‘This is wonderful. I’m on my own, completely disconnected from the world.’ I did a perfect landing, too. That was the first climax and it just went on from there.”
The 97-year-old gives a wide, sunny smile, which is her default setting. There are a few indicators of her past life around her – a world atlas; a
