Keeping up with the Joneses, Episode 9 – back to work at last. We discover that the chopper crash which we’ve seen glimpses of since the first series screened last year, was in fact not an NAH chopper. Milton described it as a ‘neighbours’ chopper. VH-HYE was manufactured in 1990 and had been registered to Venlock Pty Limited in 2003, with the same address as Brodie’s Stock & Station Agency in Cloncurry (NW Qld). Whether it was still owned by Venlock P/L or had been sold, it isn’t clear. Cloncurry Mustering is a well-known aviation company, with many pilots and choppers etc. Apparently both the pilot and passenger escaped the crash, relatively unharmed. But we are left not knowing the cause of the crash, other than Milton Joneses summation that the chopper crashed due to lack of power – too much weight onboard in hot conditions. Ever the businessmen with an eye on the future and always on the lookout for a useful deal, Milton purchases the R22 chopper wreck, for the salvage cost, for parts. Helicopter and aeroplane parts are hugely expensive.
In another piece of typical film production – when we watch the injured duck swim off, we hear a Khaki Campbell duck type of quacking (Khaki Campbells are a domestic breed of duck, first bred in England – the sort you’d find turning the water green in Sydney or Melbourne Botanic Gardens) – when in fact it would have been a native breed, probably a very common ‘whistling’ duck. Having lived in lots of different parts of Australia, I find it difficult not to notice when film editors stuff up bird and animal noises (the most common error, with regard to cattle stations, is adding the sound of bos taurus cattle (eg Herefords) mooing though it’s a mob of bos indicus cattle (eg Brahmans) we’re seeing – when in fact these two types of cattle sound distinctly different.)
In episode 9 we see what is now a typical sight in the bush – backpackers at work. However these two girls (from England and Scotland – where the hardest working backpackers come from, according to many rural employers) are more cheerful than most. However I hope the Joneses doubled their potato order, given the amount that was carved off during the peeling process (start with one large potato with the skin on, finish with one very small, peeled potato). One confessed to having never cooked a meal before. One backpacker I met years ago was employed as the station cook although she was a strict vegetarian. As beef was on the menu morning, noon and night; doing a good job of cooking something you never ate, and in a varied fashion, was a near impossibility. The manager even refused to eat any of the first pot of rice she cooked, and tipped it into the pig’s bucket.
But I am left wondering about the big circular area of cultivated land, not far from the Coolibah homestead. It looked like a crop has been planted (presumably some sort of cattle feed – eg sorghum) and that it will be watered by a centre pivot irrigator. Hopefully this gets a mention in another episode.
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Tags: Coolibah Station, Keeping up with the Joneses, Australian outback TV and film