The Aviator and Palm Reader

A damaged wooden propeller, a gas mask, gloves, an aviator’s uniform – these are some of the items at the heart of the Edward Lane collection. Curious and misunderstood, questions were raised as to why we retained a piece of propeller, a broken relic from a failed mission. But, surviving a crash is no small feat and the extraordinary individual at the centre of this collection, did so twice.

Edward Alexander Lane was a man of many talents and eclectic experiences. His aspirations as a pilot in the Royal Australian Navy were cut short when he force-landed his plane in a field in France, grounding him for the remainder of the war. This broken propeller stems, however, from an earlier episode in 1938, when Lane crashed his faulty plane in the grounds of Mascot Golf Club.

Edward Alexander Lane gave his birth date to the authorities as 3 April 1901, though it was actually 1902; most likely because he was only 17 when he enlisted in June 1919. Born in London’s East End, he attended the Jewish Free School. In 1918, aged 16, he ran away and joined the British Merchant Navy, serving as a baker’s apprentice aboard the troop ship Wyreema. At the end of WWI, he immigrated to Australia, joining the Royal Australian Navy, serving aboard the HMAS Encounter. He remained in the Australian Navy until the mid-1930s at which point he started a business. He was a prolific inventor, inventing a prototype of the Ramset, an electric nail gun.

At the outbreak of World War II, he was told by an acquaintance that "Jews don't fight". This prompted him to enlist in the Royal Australian Navy. He was shipped to England and served as a pilot in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, flying combat missions off carrier ships. He was also a man of reinvention: Having started palm reading to calm his nerves during the war, he later wrote a newspaper column on palmistry and appeared on television. In the 1960s he began to paint and won various accolades for his work.