by Matt Wright
The cops did a reasonable job of cleaning the place out for evidence but as we explored further we came across harvested crops of dope piled up over six feet tall. I’d never seen anything like it. The cops had tried to burn it but there was so much there it hadn’t burnt all the way through. We set it in on fire and kept searching the camp for useful remnants. I hooked up tents, gas fridges, irrigation systems and Cryovac machines and flew them back to the house.
On the way back, I couldn’t get over what I had just seen. Nor could I believe the scale of the operation that was operating under our noses for so long. It says a lot about the vastness of the Australian outback.
* * *
After Pantovic was locked up I got some more work at a station he used to muster north of Wrotham Park called Palmerville Station. Palmerville was located near Maytown in the centre of the Palmer River goldfields. The region enjoyed a boom between 1873 and 1890, recording a total output of gold of more than 15 500 kilograms. But those years were a distant memory. Although there were still operating gold mines around the property, the gold yield was relatively small. That didn’t stop the prospectors turning up looking to make it rich.
Steve Struber, the owner of Palmerville Station, hated the roaming prospectors coming onto his land. He had no choice but to tolerate their presence because of their mining leases. Once every few months Steve would call me up to muster his wild bullocks, which were a handful to get into the yards. I soon learnt that Steve had no idea how to muster cattle or run a station. I ended up taking the lead and gave him a hand to set things up properly.
My mates Luke and Leon Kingsley, who owned the neighbouring station Mount Mulgrave, used to give me shit for working for Struber. They thought he was as mad as a cut snake. I didn’t mind the bloke. We got on okay and he paid well. But I didn’t know much about his personal life. That is until the day I mustered with his wife Di. She had asked to come with me in the chopper to help spot the cattle. I guess it was a bit out of the blue, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.
I noticed that Di seemed a little bit jumpy. It didn’t take long to work out why. Once we got airborne, she told me that Steve was beating on her and was afraid he was going to kill her. I was in shock. I kept her in the chopper so she could calm down and we finished the job together. Before I dropped her off, I told her she should leave Steve. She shook her head and told me not to tell anyone. I felt sick in my guts when I flew home that night. I called Steve the next day and told him I wouldn’t be coming back. It seemed the Kingsley boys were right. Steve Struber was crazy. It turned out he was crazier than anyone expected.
I was sitting on the couch just the other day watching A Current Affair when the name Steve Struber came up. The story concerned a law that was being passed that prevented the release of convicted murderers from jail even if they have served their sentences, unless they disclosed the whereabouts of their victim’s body. Strike me dead, up pops a picture of Stephen and Dianne Struber. It turned out they were both sentenced to life behind bars in 2015 for slaying a gold prospector named Bruce Schuler. They found Schuler fossicking up a dry gully on Palmerville Station. The body still hasn’t been found and they won’t ’fess up as to its location. I spent the night reflecting on that wild time in my life, working with the dark characters of the Aussie outback.
13
The Big Round-Up
The station owner at Wrotham Park pulled me into his office. It was the morning of the second day of a huge round-up. We were mustering 4000 head of cattle several kilometres over two days. It was one of the largest paddocks on the property – we had flown from daylight to dark to get just half the paddock mustered. It was a big day with four choppers in the air constantly ducking and weaving in and out of the river and trees to get the cattle out onto the flat for Wildy and his crew. This is called coach mustering. All the bikes and horses hold the mob of cattle while the choppers go wide and bring in more. It saves the chopper pilots having to keep track of the whole herd of cattle. Not only is coach mustering more efficient, it has the added bonus of educating the cattle at the same time.
We’d flown 10 hours straight – about twice the normal flying time required for a day in the sky – just to get them into a temporary holding yard. The yard was set up near the Mitchell River, a big river that snakes through the station. The plan was to let the cattle have a small drink at first light then march them to the main yard. It was going to be another big one, but I was confident we had things under control. The boss was about to throw a spanner in the works.
‘R. M. Williams are coming up today to do a photo shoot,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to fly a photographer around a bit to take a few photos.’
‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it after we get the cattle up to the fence line.’
Once a mob of cattle is at the fence line, the hard work is done. The land cruisers and quad bikes can push them up into the yard.
‘Matty,’ he said, grinning. ‘They want to take photos of you.’
The General Manager of Marketing and Sales, Arabella Gibson, wanted to get a few shots of a mustering pilot wearing their gear. It was fine by me. Not only would I get paid, I’d also get to keep the boots and clothes. We agreed to shoot the following day after the morning’s muster.
It was a camped cooked brekky to start the day – steak and eggs with a strong black coffee. Then it was all hands to the wheel. It was still dark as the stockmen were getting their horses and bikes ready. I was doing the daily look over the chopper and getting it filled up. We had three machines in the sky and worked them hard that day, desperate not to let any bulls slip away. It took us about eight hours, but eventually we had cleaned out the river and pushed most of the cattle right up to the fence line.
I flew directly to the Wrotham Park Resort and left one chopper there keeping an eye on things. There were a few models sitting around talking to Arabella. They were getting ready for an afternoon shoot when the setting sun transforms the landscape into its most photogenic state.
I introduced myself to Arabella. Then I took the photographer up for a few shots of me piloting the chopper. I set the helicopter down near the cattle and posed for the camera, leaning up against the front of the R22 with the cattle in the background. The boys on the ground were all having a good laugh at my expense. I felt like a bit of dickhead. Soon enough, I would have more important things to worry about.
One by one, cattle that were slowly being worked up the fence line started peeling back. The bikes and horsemen were having difficulty keeping them on the fence. I immediately got my machine up in the air. There were only a couple dozen that were going the wrong way. I figured I’d have no trouble rounding them up.
Suddenly, a couple dozen more turned around, then a dozen more, and a dozen after that. On it went. Before long, there were hundreds streaming past. It was late in the afternoon. These animals were in need of a drink. Obviously there was water up in the holding paddock where we intended to keep them overnight, but they weren’t to know that. As far as these cattle were concerned, the nearest drinking spot was all the way back at the river.
Other than myself, there was one other chopper handy. I had let the other two blokes knock off early thinking the bulk of the work had been done. I got on the radio to base straight away and told them to get those two boys airborne. I left the photographer in one of the LandCruisers. There was no way of getting him back to the resort. I couldn’t spare any of those vehicles. He was going to be with us for the rest of the day. Not that he minded. He was a freelancer and he was getting some terrific shots of the choppers doing their best to round up the stampeding cattle.
The guys working for R. M. Williams were a different story. I started getting radioed every half hour wanting to know what was happening with their photographer.
‘He’ll be back when we’re finished out here,’ I said.
‘When will that be?’
I felt like telling them to go and jam it. Instead, I told the
m I’d get him back soon just to get them off my back.
It was five o’clock. We had less than two hours of light. The mob had scattered as far as the eye could see. After about an hour of pushing harder than ever, we got them along the fence line. They were strung out over five kilometres. At the very limit of the horizon, all you could see was cattle. Using the fence as a barrier, the choppers, horsemen, bikes and vehicles hustled them up towards the cooler.
Night had fallen by the time they were all penned in. I’d flown close to 20 hours over a couple of days. That’s a huge amount of time in the air in a helicopter. But the job still wasn’t done. The cattle were stirred up, with the headstrong bulls trying to push back through the wire fence. The only way to keep them from stampeding was to power up all four choppers and leave them running with the lights on for over an hour while the cattle calmed down.
The R. M. Williams crew was not impressed. They would have to spend another day out at the resort. But Arabella was happy with the snaps the photographer took. While I was enjoying a well-earned beer with the boys, she approached with the offer to do more modelling work.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
You can imagine the response from the boys. They were clutching at their sides with laughter. Working on a cattle station draws the kind of bloke who eats red meat and drinks beer. It’s not exactly the place for a model. Truth be told, I wasn’t interested in modelling. I had my sights set on TV.
* * *
For a long time, the idea of putting together a television show that gave a glimpse of life in the Australian outback had been building in my mind. I had the stories, the experience and the will. What I didn’t have was contacts in the Australian media and entertainment world. Arabella was the kind of person who knew people who might help get my stuff broadcast. But before I started introducing myself to producers and network executives, I needed to show them my stuff.
Every opportunity I got, I would have my handy camera out filming. Everyone got roped in to help me out, from the resort’s head chef to the young jackaroos that came to the park for an adventure. I’d offer them a free flight in the chopper on the proviso they held the camera. Otherwise, I’d be nagging girlfriends or mates to film me catching snakes, catching bulls on horseback, breaking in a brumby or poking a croc with a stick. The boys gave me heaps of shit. But I didn’t care. I’d become determined to get a show going.
Every weekend I’d fly into Cairns and stay with mates. I’d rent out an editing suite and get to work. The footage was very amateurish: shaky and hard to watch. A lot of the time, entire sequences were out of focus. Even worse, I’d be talking but slipping out of the frame!
The better stuff was the selfie footage where I had set my camera up on a rock. It was the only material you could watch without laughing. I’d film myself with a snake or just doing a piece to camera, talking about life in the Top End. The footage is pretty cringe-worthy. There’s no excitement in my voice at all and I walk around as if I have a stick up my arse. Even while I was editing it I knew it was rough. But I managed to get a bit of interest from the networks thanks to Arabella, who provided introductions. They offered to buy them for bottom dollar and then broadcast them as clips on the morning shows.
Making it in television is tough. Most of the time, I got knocked back. I started to lose more money than I was making. After two years, I decided to pack it in. Australian Agriculture Company decided to sell Wrotham Park to Great Southern, another massive beef cattle producer. New management came in and everything changed. It felt like a good time for a new adventure.
By now, I’d racked up about 4000 hours as a mustering pilot. I was starting to get a bit tired of chasing cows around paddocks. I wanted to try a different type of flying in a different type of helicopter. A few mustering pilots had talked to me about getting work over in Canada. The money was twice as good and the flying was said to be insane. I had a bit of money saved up, and nothing tying me to Australia, so why not?
At the end of the egg-collecting season in February, I jumped on a plane and flew across the Pacific. It was the start of one of the greatest experiences of my life.
14
Canada
I travelled up to Abbotsford in British Columbia to sit my conversion test. I passed without too much hassle and received my Canadian helicopter licence. I had no trouble finding employment, landing a job with the first helicopter business I applied to. The name of the company was Qwest Helicopters.
Qwest was run by a couple of veteran chopper pilots and was operated out of Fort Nelson and Fort St John. The company had a long tradition of service in northern British Columbia; most of their flying was for the oil patch and forestry. There was also aerial firefighting, medevac, VIP transport and work up in the mountains.
I loved the job from the get-go. I did heaps of hours and the coin was good. Most of all, the flying was brilliant. This was a far cry from the mainly flat, sun-parched red country of the Australian north. Now I was flying alongside towering cliff faces, snowy mountaintops and dramatic escarpments. I was suddenly faced with a whole set of different challenges. With snowstorms whipping up in a flash, there was the constant threat of being caught in a white out. I was also flying at much higher altitude, where a helicopter’s rotors struggle to maintain lift in the thinner air. It was my lack of experience flying at in these conditions that played a part in my first and only crash in a helicopter.
I was taking a group of surveyors north of Fort Nelson. They were conducting oil and gas exploration for a major company. Working with Canada’s primary industries was a mainstay for Qwest and this was going to be a big job. I flew out in the company’s Bell 206, the Jet Ranger. With a reputation for safety and reliability, the Jet Ranger has been popular among pilots since it was first rolled out in the 1960s. I had a complement of four passengers with the plan to find a firm patch of ground to drop three of them off and take one back up the hill to jump out of the chopper and cut a pad for me to land. Then I would go back and get the remaining crew so they didn’t have to walk for miles knee deep in snow.
I found a spot to land at the intersection of two seismic lines. A seismic line is a bulldozed pathway through forest, allowing a passage for drills, equipment and power cables to be laid. Even though it was late in the summer, the seismic lines were carpeted with snow and ice. From above, it looked to be firm ground. I was about to learn that when it comes to finding firm ground on which to land in northern Canada, looks can be deceiving.
My approach to the intersection of the seismic lines was very smooth. I set her down without much drama. We sat there for a few minutes; I held power on while the crew decided what they wanted to do. Plans changed and they agreed they were going to walk up to the surveyed area and conduct their work. I lowered the collective and wound the throttle back to idle. That’s when things went wrong.
Within seconds I felt the machine rock backwards on the right-hand side. I tried to wind the throttle back and get out of there but the turbine wasn’t responsive. The chopper dropped further backwards and the tail hit the ice. The machine started to shake violently so I shut it down and held the cyclic forward keeping the main rotor away from the ice. I knew if the rotor hit the ice it would have been catastrophic. The gearbox would have ripped off the machine, sending the body of the chopper into a violent spin and leaving us cactus. One of the young women in the back of the chopper started screaming. She really lost it.
‘We’re going to die! We’re going to die!’ she screamed.
I told her to shut up while I tried to work out what to do. We all watched with mounting dread as the rotor inched closer and closer to the ice.
‘Let me out!’ The woman screamed, tears streaming down her eyes.
‘Sit down,’ I said, firmly. ‘Everyone is going to be fine.’
The machine dropped suddenly again, bringing the rotor to within about a foot of the ice. To compensate, I held the cyclic full over to the left. The whole machine started to shudder and groan.
The chopper was fighting hard to stay above the ground. It felt like hours before that helicopter powered down fully and the rotor stopped spinning.
I gave the all clear for everyone to slowly exit the chopper. Everyone piled out at lightning speed. I was worried that a sudden weight variance might cause the helicopter to sink further. But she remained steady. Once everyone was out I inspected the inside of the helicopter. Water had flooded into the back, saturating a couple of bags, including my own. My laptop was destroyed. Otherwise everything was okay.
My major concern was exterior damage. If the tail rotor was damaged the cost of repair would be enormous. I walked around the back of the aircraft with my heart in my mouth. Luckily, when the skid broke through the ice, the chopper fell back towards the right. The tail rotor is located on the left side of the tail boom. Aside from a bit of a dent at the back of the chopper, the machine appeared to be undamaged. Now all I had to do was work out how to get it out of the icy water. I turned to the passengers.
‘You guys get on with your work,’ I said. ‘I’ll get on the radio and sort this out with the guys back at base.’
Off they went, convinced I had the situation under control. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
The radio was undamaged, but we had flown a long way from base. We were beyond range. There was always the unappealing option of activating the EPIRB (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon). Turning on an EPIRB is not something done lightly. The huge cost involved in dispatching every rescue helicopter and plane not to mention search parties often results in public enquires. The last thing I wanted was to risk losing my licence. It would also result in Qwest suffering devastating reputational damage.
The other option was to wait for Qwest to send someone up to find me. Base was expecting me back within an hour. If I didn’t turn up, they would attempt to hail me on radio. When that failed, they would send a couple of choppers out to go look. It was hard to imagine that they wouldn’t spot me. But it was still a risk. If they failed to locate us, we would face a night sleeping rough in sub-zero temperatures. That was a risk I wasn’t prepared to take. But just before I activated the EPIRB, an idea popped into my head. I remembered one of the other pilots was on a job nearby. She might just be in radio range. It was worth a try. I got on the radio.