The mother of a pilot badly injured in a helicopter crash has vehemently denied she and her family concocted claims against reality TV star Matt Wright to protect her son.
Wright, the star of Outback Wrangler, is on trial in Darwin Supreme Court having pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
The charges follow the helicopter crash in February 2022 that killed Wright’s friend and co-star Chris “Willow” Wilson on a crocodile-egg collecting mission in the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land.
Pilot Sebastian Robinson, 32, was left a paraplegic after the crash.
The charges do not relate to the cause of the accident and the prosecution does not allege Wright is responsible for the crash, Wilson’s death or Robinson’s injuries.
Wright has been accused of trying to get Robinson to fake flying-hour records because he was concerned crash investigators would find out he and his pilots had disconnected flight-time meters and faked paperwork.
Today, Robinson’s mother, Noelene Chellingworth, told the jury Wright visited her son in Royal Brisbane Hospital 11 days after the crash.
She said Wright asked her son to move flying hours from the crashed helicopter to Robinson’s machine.Â
“Sebastian said that he would think about it,” she said, but when Wright visited two days later, her son told him he was “not comfortable” moving hours and declined to do so. Â
Ms Chellingworth said she saw Wright standing over her son at his bedside telling him to “delete, delete, delete” messages on his phone.
She said she asked Wright why he was making demands of her son, and said that Wright “fobbed me off”, saying “he’s just cleaning up stuff”.
She said she got the feeling Wright wasn’t really concerned about her son.
In cross-examination, senior defence counsel David Edwardson KC put it to Ms Chellingworth that Wright had not asked Robinson to transfer flying hours at all.
“You’re making this up as you go along,” he said, with Ms Chellingworth replying, “No I’m not”.
Edwardson said Wright was simply helping her son get his paperwork up to date, as he had a responsibility to do so, as he was flying under Wright’s air operators certificate.
The jury has heard that Robinson’s flight records were not up to date.
Edwardson put it to Ms Chellingworth that her family colluded to try to “deflect the blame across to Mr Wright” to avoid Robinson being blamed for the crash.
“I do not agree at all,” she replied.
Ms Chellingworth admitted her son had asked her to source marijuana and she had forged his signature from time to time when helping him run his helicopter company.
Earlier on Tuesday, Robinson’s brother, Zaccarie Chellingworth, was also grilled over the bedside conversation between Wright and the injured pilot at the hospital.Â
Wright had said he needed to take 15 to 20 hours off the crashed helicopter and put them on Robinson’s own chopper “because there were hours unaccounted for”, Mr Chellingworth said.
Under questioning from Edwardson, Mr Chellingworth, a licensed aircraft engineer, said he was aware aviation crash investigators suspected the crashed chopper had run out of fuel.Â
Edwardson put it to Mr Chellingworth he knew his brother would be in trouble if fuel exhaustion was found to be the cause of the crash.
Mr Chellingworth rejected that and Edwardson’s accusation that his family had “manufactured allegations” against Wright to protect Robinson from blame for the crash.Â
When asked about Robinson’s cocaine use, Mr Chellingworth said his brother was not an addict or a dealer and he had only seen him take the drug once, at a bucks party on Wright’s boat.
The trial continues tomorrow.
