by Matt Wright
‘I’m a great shot,’ he said.
I had my doubts. Hitting a moving target from a hovering helicopter is not easy. But there was no talking him out of it. This bloke was all keyed up for a hunt and I was employed to do a job. I powered up the R22 and off we went.
It took us no time to find a mob of 10 brumbies. They were grazing in open country. This was good. I’d be able to take the chopper in low without having to skirt around trees. If the station owner was as good a shot as he claimed, he should be able to take down a couple of horses without trouble.
The mob bolted as I brought the chopper in close. The brumbies all got in behind the stallion – a beautiful chestnut Waler. The Waler has a long association with the Australian military. In earlier conflicts, particularly the Boer War and the First World War, the Waler was the most sought-after breed among Australian Light Horse units. Hardy and tough, the Waler performed superbly in the deserts of North Africa and the open plains of South Africa. It goes just as well in the Australian outback. These days the army maintains Walers for ceremonial duties.
I took the chopper down and ran alongside the big stallion while the station manager lined him up. As he squeezed off a couple of rounds, I felt sick in the guts. Shooting from a chopper at a proud stallion felt completely wrong. It got worse when I saw the stallion buck in agony as the bullets punched into him. I could see blood pouring out of bullet holes in his neck and withers. But this was a strong animal. Only a kill shot would bring him down.
‘Shoot him in the head!’ I shouted.
‘I’m trying!’
As I feared, the station manager was not such a hot shot after all. He put another five bullets into the poor animal, but failed to bring him down. I decided to pull up.
‘What are you doing?’ shouted the station owner.
‘I’ve got a better idea.’
I scouted the terrain below and found a narrow ravine. I set the chopper down nearby and laid out my plan.
‘Wait here,’ I said. ‘I’ll run these horses up and you shoot them when they come past.’
He nodded his head enthusiastically. Once the station manager was out of the chopper, I took off and headed back to the field where I’d left the horses. I found the mob bunched around the stallion. He was hopping around, blood seeping out of his wounds. I set the chopper down nearby, dispersing all the horses. The stallion could barely manage a canter. I took out my pistol, walked up to him and put a bullet in his head. He crumpled to the ground dead. It was devastating.
The rest of the horses had gone off in all directions when they heard the gunshot. I ran back to the chopper and got airborne. I rounded them up and guided them towards the ravine. They bunched in tightly together, just as I hoped. In the distance, the station manager had his rifle raised, waiting for the herd. I doubted that this bloke had the skill to bring down nine charging horses. There was no way I was going to condemn these animals to the same fate as the stallion. I was going to make sure these horses were down before that happened.
I pulled up and circled around the horses. The horses skidded to a halt before changing direction. I dropped in low beside them and started picking them off one-by-one. Once the last horse fell, I set the chopper down and went to inspect the horses. I wanted to make sure none of them were still alive or in pain. The station manager came bounding up.
‘I had them covered,’ he said. ‘You didn’t need to do that.’
I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t a good enough shot to give these animals a clean kill. But there was no need. He got the message. He radioed his boys back at the homestead and gave them our position. About 10 minutes later, several blokes in a couple of land cruisers rolled out to our position.
As I watched the boys butcher up the meat, I couldn’t believe the waste. All of these horses could have been herded back to the yard and broken in. It’s true that in the motorised age cattle stations no longer depend on horses like they once did. But these horses could easily have been sold interstate or internationally. Anything was better than killing them for dingo bait.
I went to bed that night, haunted by what I had just done. At some point an idea popped into my head. If everyone was against the idea of culling brumbies, why was it still going on? The key was getting the message out to people in the big smoke and attempting to put an economic value on our feral animals in Australa. I wasn’t interested in some boring old news report. I wanted to do something bigger.
Looking back, I reckon that was the point the idea of a television show took hold. I didn’t act straight away, partly because I didn’t know where to start. But I never let go of the dream. So when the opportunity to get something going presented itself, the idea for what I wanted to do was clear in my mind. In the end, my big break came on another hard day’s work. It happened a couple of years after the brumby episode while I was working on one of the toughest cattle stations in Australia – Wrotham Park.
12
Murder in the Outback
Situated in far north Queensland, Wrotham Park Station is 600 000 hectares of limestone escarpments, towering rocky pillars, rainforest country, rivers, billabongs and rolling hills. It’s beautiful country, ideal for grazing while offering cattle plenty of places to cool off in the shade. It’s also a nightmare for a mustering pilot and not just because of the terrain.
I’d been sitting up in Mount Isa when the call came through to John Logan. One of the other pilots, a bloke by the name of Nick, had been in a bad crash. They needed someone to sling what remained of Nick’s chopper back to the homestead. Witnesses to the crash said that he was pushing the cattle in towards the yard when he was hit by a microburst – a sudden downdraft that occurs in thunderstorms and is lethal to low-flying aircraft. The chopper nearly flipped on its lid. He overcompensated, pulling the cyclic back too hard and putting the main rotor back through his tail boom. He levelled out and for a split second everything seemed fine, but the damage to the tail boom was catastrophic. It snapped off. Without the anti-torque rotor, the helicopter went into a violent spin, flipped onto its side and barrel-rolled several times before miraculously landing upright. He was dragged out unconscious suffering only a broken arm from the main rotor blade coming down through the cab of the chopper. He was lucky to have survived.
I ended up taking over from him at Wrotham Park. It would have been better if Nick retired then. He instead decided to get back up in the air and flew for another few years as a mustering pilot at other stations around Australia. He put a few more machines into the ground along the way. He met his end out on a dual muster due to a fault in the machine.
Wrotham Park was infamous for chopper crashes. Prior to my time, several pilots mustered that country and crashed regularly. One bloke crashed nine times and the lucky bastard still managed to survive. I even remember back to when I was doing my licence I was always hearing stories of Wrotham Park. The cattle were wild and its rubber-vine jungles were treacherous. This was not a place to be treated lightly.
A big part of mustering on Wrotham Park involved catching cleanskin cattle. We call them cleanskins because they have never been brought to the yard. As such, these animals have unblemished skin having never been branded or earmarked. They are bred in the wild and grow up that way, charging anyone who dares to come near.
Cleanskins are worth a bit, provided you can get them into the yard without wasting resources or getting yourself killed. If a bull is too dangerous, then it has to be shot. I did a bit of bull catching with Milton at Moroak and Coolibah. It was great fun, heading out on bull catchers, bikes or horseback and head-roping a big old wild bull. But at Wrotham Park there was a higher degree of difficulty.
The cattle up in that corner of the country are ferocious. Every worker who has set foot on Wrotham Park has a story about being hit by wild cattle. I was smoked a few times myself. Often it was the little ones that caused you the most grief. Like the one that nearly did me in while I was bull catching with my great mate Brett Wild.
‘Wildy’ was al
ways good to go bull catching with. He was cool, calm and collected and had worked his way up through the ranks to become head stockman. One day we came across an unassuming little red bull. This was an easy get. When he saw us coming, he turned round and bolted. I gave my horse a kick and went after him. The little bull took me through an outcrop of eucalyptus trees. I ducked under low-hanging branches and hung on for dear life as my horse cleared fallen timber and boulders. This little fella was giving us a good run around.
Once I was out of the trees and onto an open plain, I had him. I brought the horse right up behind him and then dismounted, running hard as I hit the ground with a rope slung over my shoulder. I reached out to grab his tail when the little bastard turned round and sideswiped me. It was a perfectly timed hit. I ended up landing face first in the dirt. Luckily, the bull’s horns were only small. I put my arms over my head to protect myself against serious injury as he came at me. He got his little horns under me lifting me up and rolling me round for about a minute. Wildy was roaring with laughter.
‘Wildy’ I shouted. ‘Give me a hand!’
He dismounted and ran up behind the bull and grabbed his tail. The bull kicked and bucked violently, managing to free himself from Wildy’s grip. Now it was my turn to do the laughing as Wildy was chased round and round a tree. He had left his rope on the horse and had nowhere to hide. I dusted myself off and ran back in to help out. For such a small bull he had a heck of a lot of go in him. After 15 minutes, we eventually managed to wrestle him down to a creek bed where we were able to hold him down, get a head rope on him and tie him to a tree to cool down.
The problem with little bulls is that they tend to have greater stamina. Although big bulls are significantly more dangerous, they are usually easier to catch. The trick with the bigger bulls is to get right up on them as fast as you can and puff them out. This means you have to push them as hard and fast as you can in a very short distance so they tire quickly. When the bull slows down to catch his breath, you jump off your bike and grab hold of his tail. Then you run forward and just as he tries to spin you pull him down. If you’re quick enough this usually works. If you’re too slow then you have to find yourself a tree to hide behind. As the bull charges you throw your catching rope around his horns and tie him up to the tree. In theory, this seems simple enough. In practice, it can be a very different story.
* * *
I was out catching a few bulls with my mate Sam Alford. Sam loaned me his dirt bike while he went on horseback. We spotted a big old cleanskin drinking from the bank of a creek. I gave the bike full throttle and was up alongside him in no time. He seemed a pretty relaxed old boy. That was until I drew up next to him on the bike. This big old fella had a huge spread of horns that tapered off into sharp ends. I got a great pump on him through the thick riverside shrub, or so I thought . . .
I jumped off the bike and managed to get the stand down so the bike didn’t topple over. I ran flat out towards the bull and reached out for his tail just as he spun around on me like a ballerina. Standing at arm’s length with the bull, I noticed just how lethally sharp the ends of his horns were.
I put my hand out on his forehead and hazed him off as I ran backwards looking for a tree to get behind. There wasn’t much around, so I got behind the bike. I ran the bull round and round in circles, using the bike as a barrier. The bull was getting increasingly frustrated. Rather than run around the bike, he decided to get it out of the way. He dropped his head, and stuck one horn through the back tyre and one through the fuel tank. He lifted the bike in the air and walked off.
Sam arrived at that very moment.
‘What the hell is he doing with my bike?’ he shouted.
The bull took off back down towards the river with the bike stuck to his horns. It was a pretty funny sight, although Sam wasn’t laughing. We gave chase, mainly to get the bike back. The bull eventually dropped the bike and then disappeared into some pretty tough country. Considering a bull had just impaled it, I thought the bike looked in pretty good condition. Sam didn’t agree. I didn’t hear the end of that one!
Those were memorable run-ins with wild cattle, but they weren’t life-threatening. When a fully grown wild bull comes at you, it’s no laughing matter. A mate of mine named Dallas Steele was out catching bulls at the Park. He found an enormous cleanskin, and got him to a tree. Round and round they went till the bull got the better of him. The bull put one of his horns right through Dallas’ stomach. He lifted him up and carried him for about 15 metres before dumping him on the ground. Dallas survived, the horn missing vital organs by a matter of centimetres.
I’ve had a couple of good episodes with cranky bulls. They’re not times I’ll easily forget. A couple of boys had come across a cleanskin that was way too tough to haul back to the yard. They chased him on horseback and put six bullets into him. The bull was a hardy old bastard and managed to escape. I was told to get up in the R22 and go finish off the job. Before I left, the head stockman gave me a warning.
‘There’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded bull,’ he said.
I nodded my head and took off in the chopper. I found the bull lying in the shade of a tree in a creek bed. From the sky, he looked to be dead. But I wasn’t taking any chances. After setting the chopper down, I drew my pistol and carefully approached on foot. The bull was slumped over. He didn’t look to be breathing. The only sign of life was the blood pumping out of his bullet wounds. I got to within two metres when the bull pulled himself up. He lifted his head and eyeballed me. I’ll never forget the look of madness in those eyes. He meant to kill. I registered one thought at the moment: Oh shit!
The bull stood up. I took a couple of steps backwards, never lowering my gun. I wasn’t going to fire unless necessary. If I shot the bull and didn’t kill him, the damn thing would certainly charge me.
I made my way behind an old rotten tree trunk. It was about the thickness of a man’s leg. Once I was safely behind the trunk, the bull charged. I had a round of six bullets. I squeezed off two shots, the bullets literally bouncing off his hard head and stirring him up even more. The bull burst through the rotten log as if it was made out of cardboard. He lowered his head, intent on goring me with his horns. The move exposed the top of his head. The bull was now inches away from ramming me. In that final split second, I put the gun against his head and pulled the trigger. I remember the clicking sound of the gun jamming before everything went black.
The next thing I remember was waking up completely disoriented. The bull had thrown me 20 feet. Fortunately, I was wearing my helicopter helmet. But I didn’t get away scot-free. When I tried to move I felt incredible pain in both my arms. I looked down to see the sleeves of my shirt drenched in blood. The bull had put a hole in each arm.
I got to my feet and staggered over to the chopper. Luckily, the bull was nowhere to be seen. I flew back to the house and got patched up. It could have been a lot worse.
* * *
During my time at Wrotham Park, I did some contract mustering to the neighbouring cattle stations, including Bolwarra, Blackdown, Bulimba and Mount Mulgrave. Some of these places are so remote that you can inhabit a world of your own without too much outside contact. As such, they are the perfect sorts of places to engage in crime.
Take, for example, the story of chopper pilot Peter Pantovic. A couple of mates of mine, brothers Tony and Greg Hicks, bought Bolwarra Station from Pantovic back in 2005. The station was located southwest of Chillagoe in Queensland. It looked like a promising business venture. The two brothers couldn’t have known that they were stepping into the underworld.
Alarm bells probably should’ve started ringing when Pantovic agreed to sell the station on the proviso that he could remain as a mustering pilot. It turned out Pantovic had teamed up with drug kingpin Alexander Malcolm Lane and was running a hefty operation on the backblocks of Bolwarra.
After a year or so, the Hicks boys didn’t like having Pantovic around. For one thing, they felt he was a substandard musterin
g pilot. So they called me in and I ended up doing a lot of work around the station. I mustered the station for over two years but never flew over the backblocks because it was bad country with no cattle.
Even though Pantovic finished up mustering he continued to work with Lane and three other members to continue the multi-million-dollar syndicate. The size of the station was so vast, they could use helicopters to ferry men and supplies into the remote bush camps without the Hicks boys realising what was happening on their property. Pantovic and his goons grew tonnes of high-grade cannabis every year, earning up to $300 000 each crop, which was reportedly paid in cash and gold bullion. There was so much money coming in, the syndicate bosses had to bury it in secret caches, including down a mineshaft.
I’ll never forget the day I woke up with chopper pilots calling me all morning asking if I knew about the bust at Bolwarra. I had no idea what was going on. The police had raided the station after receiving a tip-off. An aerial search of the property revealed an empty chopper. The chopper was still running with no pilot. A manhunt began immediately. Police called me and every other mustering pilot in the area. All of us were under investigation until the police busted Pantovic. In 2007, Pantovic, Lane and the other syndicate members were sentenced after a three-year joint police and Australian Crime Commission investigation traced the syndicate across Australia and to Europe. It would go down as one of Australia’s most sophisticated marijuana growing cartels.
I got the call up from the Hicks brothers after the police had finished with the site. The coppers had told the Hicks boys that they could have what was left of the camp infrastructure the syndicate had set up. So I flew out with the boys. Flying out there, we were all waiting in anticipation to see what this camp was like and, bloody hell, you could see it from a mile off. With all of the nutrients that had been pumped into the ground the valley in which the camps were set up looked like a lush oasis in the middle of the desert. We landed in the valley where we saw cleared areas with an army-like camp set-up.
