Keeping up with the Joneses, Episode 9 – back to work at last.\u00a0 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\u00a0chopper.\u00a0 Milton described it as\u00a0a ‘neighbours’ chopper.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 Whether it was still owned by Venlock P\/L or had been sold, it isn’t clear.\u00a0 Cloncurry Mustering is a well-known aviation company, with many pilots and choppers etc.\u00a0 Apparently both the pilot and passenger escaped the crash, relatively unharmed.\u00a0 But we are left not knowing the cause of the crash, other than Milton Joneses\u00a0summation that the chopper crashed due to lack of power – too much weight onboard in hot conditions.\u00a0 Ever the businessmen with an eye on the future and always on the lookout for a\u00a0useful deal, Milton purchases the R22 chopper wreck, for the salvage cost,\u00a0for parts.\u00a0 Helicopter and aeroplane parts are hugely expensive.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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\u00a0error, with regard to cattle stations, is adding the sound of bos taurus cattle (eg Herefords)\u00a0mooing 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.)<\/p>\n
In episode 9 we see what is now a typical sight in the bush – backpackers at work.\u00a0 However these two girls (from England\u00a0 and Scotland – where the hardest working backpackers come from, according to many rural employers) are more cheerful than most.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 One confessed to having never cooked a meal before.\u00a0\u00a0One\u00a0backpacker\u00a0I met years ago\u00a0was employed as the station cook although she was a strict vegetarian.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The manager even refused to eat any of the first pot of rice she cooked, and tipped it into the pig’s bucket.<\/p>\n
But I am left wondering about the big circular area of cultivated land, not far from the Coolibah homestead.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Hopefully this gets a mention in another episode.<\/p>\n
People who have enjoyed watching ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ love the best-selling coffee table style books ‘A Million Acre Masterpiece’ and ‘Life as an Australian Horseman’.\u00a0 These unique books contain more than 500 photos taken on Australia’s largest cattle stations and every photo has a short but interesting caption, to help those unfamiliar with these cattle stations understand more about outback life.\u00a0 These books\u00a0are ideal Christmas gifts.\u00a0 Orders for 2 or more books come with a free calico carrybag and a good discount, books can be personally signed and mailed direct to anywhere in the world.\u00a0 The books\u00a0also come with a money-back guarantee of satisfaction.\u00a0 For more information on these outback\u00a0books, visit the Book Contents<\/a> page, or visit the Testimonials<\/a> page to read comments from other book purchasers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Keeping up with the Joneses, Episode 9 – back to work at last.\u00a0 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\u00a0chopper.\u00a0 Milton described it as\u00a0a ‘neighbours’ chopper.\u00a0 VH-HYE was manufactured in 1990 and had been registered to Venlock Pty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,217],"tags":[214,215,218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1969"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2123,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions\/2123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}