![\"Outback](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/7679ded6a4d93f388c23445d9c7680bfab50f7e3.jpg\")
Outback Wrangler Matt Wright and his wife Kaia Wright approaching the Supreme Court in Darwin on Tuesday August 12. NewsWire\/ Zizi Averill Credit: News Corp Australia<\/p>\nThe aircraft \u2013 a Robinson R44, registered VH-IDW \u2013 was owned and operated by Mr Wright\u2019s since-liquidated company Helibrook.<\/p>\n
Mr Wright is on trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court after being charged with three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice in relation to the investigation into the fatal crash. The 45-year-old Top End tourism operator has pleaded not guilty to all charges.<\/p>\n
During his second day of evidence Mr Robinson told the jury that Mr Wright visited him in Royal Brisbane Hospital twice after the crash. The first visit, with his wife Kaia, was on March 11.<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Jason Gullaci SC asked Mr Robinson about his condition at that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had tubes coming out of me everywhere. I had braces on, neck, ankles, elbow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was hallucinating. I was \u2013 yes, seeing things that weren\u2019t there. I was in very bad shape, like \u2013 yes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t remember much other than seeing tubes and bits and pieces and still trying to work out what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Gullaci asked Mr Robinson how he felt when Mr Wright first visited him at hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was still heavily sedated and under a lot of medication,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember him being there, but like I can\u2019t remember the entirety of him being there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was obviously laying in a hospital bed. I couldn\u2019t, if I wanted to get out of bed, I had to put a neck brace on and I had to get a hoist to lift me up to put me into a wheelchair. Yeah, I was still in very bad shape.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the day of Mr Wright\u2019s visit, Mr Robinson was in a private hospital room.<\/p>\n
His mother and one of his brothers had been in the room with him before Mr Wright and his wife Kaia arrived with a bundle of documents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember laying in the bed looking down at an arrangement of documents all across in front of me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say the exact number, but I know it was a few (documents).\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Gullaci asked Mr Robinson what Mr Wright had said to him in relation to the documents.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked me if I would consider putting any of his (egg collection) hours from his helicopter onto my helicopter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked if he could put hours from IDW to my aircraft Zulu Xray Zulu.<\/p>\n
\u201cZXZ was not fitted with dual hooks to sling people. It was never \u2013 it was not used for the purpose of human external cargo and was not fitted with the equipment to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court heard that the second document Mr Wright allegedly left at the hospital said \u201cCurrent MR plus 16.3\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did you understand you were being asked to do?\u201d Mr Gullaci asked.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old said the Outback Wrangler host had wanted \u201cto manipulate hours on my aircraft\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"Pilot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/9517bd0a528b4b571356276d28fb3d87ea9b969c.jpg\")
Pilot Sebastian Robinson, who was critically injured in the chopper crash that killed Netflix star Chris Wilson, is expected to give evidence at Outback Wrangler Matt Wright\u2019s criminal trial in Darwin. Credit: Unknown\/Supplied<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many hours did you understand you were being asked to put on ZXZ?,\u201d Mr Gullaci asked.<\/p>\n
Mr Robinson said \u201c16.3\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was still in a pretty bad way and very confused, and I knew something wasn\u2019t right. And I said I\u2019d think about it, from memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember something along the lines of him saying, \u2018Just have a think about it and I\u2019ll come back and see you tomorrow\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
During questioning, Mr Robinson confirmed Mr Wright left two documents at the hospital and his mother, Noelene Chellingworth, took a photograph of them.<\/p>\n
Mr Wright then visited Mr Robinson in hospital again on March 13 and brought his friend Jai Tomlinson with him.<\/p>\n
Mr Robinson\u2019s mum and uncle Jim Carew were present at the hospital and, before Mr Wright and Mr Tomlinson arrived, they allegedly discussed whether they should record Mr Wright\u2019s conversation with the injured pilot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just remember having concerns about what was happening,\u201d Mr Robinson said.<\/p>\n
Mr Wright allegedly brought up the transfer of flight hours from IDW to ZXZ again.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked me if I\u2019d made my – if I\u2019d be happy to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I recall I said I didn\u2019t feel comfortable doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he was upset, I think, you know, from the way I remember … he sort of said, \u2018That\u2019s okay\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court also heard that during Mr Wright\u2019s first visit to the hospital on March 11 he had asked the injured pilot for his personal mobile phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked to go through my phone and delete a few things,\u201d Mr Robinson said.<\/p>\n
Mr Robinson said he also \u201cvaguely\u201d remembers \u201cdeleting notes out of my phone\u201d while Mr Wright was with him at hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cStart and stop times for IDW for egg collection,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were notes in my iPhone that I would send to him at the end, for example, at the end of the week, after a week of collecting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember looking over and seeing him holding my phone and flicking through it and deleting things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Robinson believes Mr Wright also deleted text messages with the notes attached.<\/p>\n
He said he also deleted some material from his phone while in hospital but was unsure when he did that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I mentioned, I was panicked and didn\u2019t know who to trust and, you know, scared Matt was coming down and, you know, things were happening and I didn\u2019t know – yeah, it was a very hard time for me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know who to trust and yeah, I panicked and went along with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the hardest thing I\u2019ve ever been through in my life. You know, learning that you\u2019ve got a severed spinal cord and you know, you can\u2019t think, you can\u2019t say, you know, you\u2019re scared. Like, I wouldn\u2019t wish that experience upon anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snippets of a secret recording made by Mr Carew during Mr Wright\u2019s second hospital visit were also played to the jury.<\/p>\n
In the recording Mr Wright can allegedly be heard talking to his employee Morgan Vidler on his mobile phone, while in the hospital room with Mr Robinson, about flight hours and a maintenance release.<\/p>\n
Mr Gullaci said Mr Wright can be heard, in one section of the recording, asking someone \u201cwe don\u2019t even need to fill a trip sheet out for that do we?\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Robinson said he hadn\u2019t \u201cseen a Helibrook trip sheet in years\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a small period, from memory, with the previous chief pilot, where he showed us how to use them but it wasn\u2019t common practice to fill them out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When Mr Gullaci showed Mr Robinson three trip sheets, purportedly filled out by him, in February 2022, the witness denied it was his handwriting.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you fill that in?\u201d Mr Gullaci asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo I did not, no,\u201d Mr Robinson said.<\/p>\n
![\"Pilot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/31c21dabb2eee61c0a42f39a496e4a6d74096832.jpg\")
Pilot Sebastian Robinson, who was critically injured in the chopper crash that killed Netflix star Chris Wilson, is expected to give evidence at Outback Wrangler Matt Wright\u2019s criminal trial in Darwin. PICTURED: Pilot Sebastian Robinson (l) and Chris Wilson Unknown Credit: Unknown\/Supplied<\/p>\n
He was then shown another trip sheet he had purportedly filled out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not. That\u2019s fabricated. That\u2019s \u2013 I did not do that,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Wednesday the court heard Mr Wright was not on the egg-collecting mission the day of the crash \u201cbecause he was an anti-vaxxer\u201d so could not enter Arnhem Land where strict COVID restrictions were in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just common knowledge that he wasn\u2019t vaccinated, so he couldn\u2019t do any work in Arnhem Land,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone knew that Matt was an anti-vaxxer so he could only fly in places where there weren\u2019t restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this, Mr Wright flew to the remote crash site after learning of the accident.<\/p>\n
Mr Robinson said there were also restrictions on who could visit him in hospital and that visitors \u201chad to have a valid COVID certificate\u201d.<\/p>\n
The trial before acting Justice Alan Blow continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A paraplegic pilot who survived a fatal chopper crash says reality television star Matt Wright visited him in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[63,43,44,8867,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-65095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-northern-territory","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}