POLICE divers will today try to retrieve the body of a pilot
who worked for Northern Territory charter flight company owner and
reality TV star Milton Jones after a helicopter crashed into a remote
Kimberley gorge yesterday.
The 40-year-old pilot and
another pilot had been mustering on Louisa Downs station, 140km west of
Halls Creek, in two separate Robinson 22 helicopters.
At the end
of the day, as they flew back to their accommodation at nearby Larrawa
station, they landed to go for a swim in the gorge. But when the
40-year-old later took off, he clipped the side of the ravine and
crashed to the bottom and into 2m of water.
The cook at Larrawa
station, Wendy Brockhurst, said yesterday the pilots had been there for
two weeks and the dead man was "lovely, you couldn't get a nicer
person".
"He didn't come across as a foolhardy person," she said.
Staff
at Mr Jones's Darwin-based Northern Australian Helicopters would not
comment, except to say a statement would be released in coming days.
Mr
Jones is the owner of NAH, which has been operating across northern
Australia since 1993 and serves mining companies, government
departments, tourism and mustering.
He appeared in last year's hit
Ten Network reality series Keeping Up With the Joneses, about life on
his 400,000ha cattle station.
He has been fighting efforts by the
Civil Aviation Safety Authority to examine uncut footage from the
program allegedly showing him piloting a helicopter after drinking
alcohol, leaving children unattended in a running helicopter and using a
helicopter to tow his son on water skis.
A CASA spokesman said
yesterday the footage was still being examined. No charges have been
laid. Mr Jones has described that investigation as a "witch-hunt".
There
are no roads to the remote gorge on Louisa Downs Station and police
divers and two Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigators sent
from Perth were not expected to reach the site until midday today.
A
police spokesman said officers would not release the pilot's name until
they reached the site and could confirm the person's identity and
inform his family.
ATSB general manager of aviation safety
investigations Ian Sangston said an operations investigator, who was a
licensed helicopter and plane pilot, and an aircraft mechanical engineer
had been sent to the scene.
In July last year, Jillian Jenys, 48,
was killed in an R22 helicopter as she was returning from mustering
northeast of Fitzroy Crossing, in the Kimberley.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au
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