Lisa (“Lace’) Maxwell, an experienced ‘wing-walker’, and her friend Robert Copas are remembered in these pages not because of any connection they might have had with the pioneer families of God’s Acre but because of a monument to their memory that has been erected in these grounds. They died on 1 May 1994 shortly after their vintage Tiger Moth biplane had taken off from Luskintyre Airfield in the Hunter Valley. It nosedived to the ground and exploded about 4 km north-west of Lochinvar, near Maitland, in New South Wales.

Bob Copas, a master pilot, and Lace Maxwell, ‘a vivacious fun-loving person’, ‘had been wing-walking many times before’. On this tragic occasion they were carrying out an acrobatic stunt routine for about 40 members and relatives of CanTeen (Australian Teenage Cancer Patients Society). Their ages are given in a newspaper report as 40 and 31 respectively. The traumatised youngsters had been camping in a hangar over the weekend and had taken joyrides in the 1931-designed Tiger Moth.

Lace Maxwell was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium after a service in St Swithun’s Anglican Church in the Sydney suburb of Pymble on the afternoon of 6 May 1994.