{"id":720076,"date":"2026-06-07T01:15:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T01:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/720076\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T01:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T01:15:16","slug":"family-remembers-wilson-sprague-as-passionate-stockman-and-good-bloke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/720076\/","title":{"rendered":"Family remembers Wilson Sprague as passionate stockman and ‘good bloke’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anne Sprague will never forget watching her son learn to ride a bike in the yard on a remote cattle station north-east of Blackall.<\/p>\n

“Wilson was very full on \u2014 he walked by the time he was nine months old,” Ms Sprague said.<\/p>\n

“He wanted to learn to ride the pushbike without training wheels. He just had that grit and determination.”<\/p>\n

Chopper pilot Wilson Sprague died in a helicopter crash while tracking a bushfire near Kowanyama, west of Cairns, on October 9 last year.<\/p>\n

“He was flying back from picking up parts and he’d noticed a fire started by lightning,” Ms Sprague said.<\/p>\n

“He just wasn’t a bloke who would’ve thought, ‘No, it’s late in the afternoon, someone else will sort that.’ He wouldn’t stop until the job was done.”<\/p>\n

In a report last month, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the 27-year-old was not qualified for night flying and the helicopter wasn’t equipped to fly after dark.<\/p>\n

Nine months on, his family and close friends are remembering Wilson as a passionate stockman and a “good bloke”.<\/p>\n

‘Gentle’ but ‘tough as nails’<\/p>\n

Growing up on a grazing property in central west Queensland, 95 kilometres from the nearest town, life was busy for the Sprague family.<\/p>\n

From a young age, Wilson would play cattle stations with his sisters, Georgia and Holly, under the backyard camphor laurel tree.<\/p>\n

“It was dirt under the tree, but they’d have their tracks and roads, and they’d have yards built, trucks, loaders,” Ms Sprague said.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Wilson Sprague grew up with his two sisters, Georgia and Holly. (Supplied: Anne Sprague)<\/p>\n

Like many who grew up on remote stations, the young boy showed a keen interest in stock work and helped muster cattle on horseback.<\/p>\n

Ms Sprague said she remembered Wilson racing down to the stockyards to help with branding in between his on-air school lessons.<\/p>\n

“He just had a quiet, gentle nature with animals. He always wanted to go work on stations,” she said.\"A<\/p>\n

Wilson Sprague was known to be gentle with livestock and animals. (Supplied: Anne Sprague)<\/p>\n

For his 14th birthday, parents Anne and Jason bought their son a trial helicopter flight on the Sunshine Coast, where he sat in the pilot’s seat and gave flying a go.<\/p>\n

Ms Sprague said her son’s “eyes lit up”.<\/p>\n

“He never stopped talking about that,” she said.<\/p>\n

The water incident<\/p>\n

In 2016, Wilson graduated high school and went to work for a cattle operation near Cloncurry as a first-year ringer, before mustering in the Northern Territory.<\/p>\n

Later, he obtained a private helicopter licence and worked across three cattle stations for family-owned MDH Pty Ltd, from Mt Windsor to Rutland Plains, as a mustering pilot.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Wilson Sprague worked on cattle stations across Queensland, as well as the Northern Territory. (Supplied: Anne Sprague)<\/p>\n

Muttaburra chopper pilot Gordon Magoffin said Wilson was the strongest person he had ever met.<\/p>\n

“He was tough as nails \u2014 [you] could not get tougher than Wilson Sprague,” Mr Magoffin said, adding that his mate could weld, drive a bulldozer, a loader and a grader.<\/p>\n

Mr Magoffin said he had known Wilson longer than anyone else in his life, except for his own family.<\/p>\n

He was a natural in the yards, but more importantly, a good friend.<\/p>\n

“Wilson used to always have this water bottle at the front of his bike,” Mr Magoffin said.<\/p>\n

“Everybody would be getting thirsty and they’d linger closer and closer to Wilson as the day went on.<\/p>\n

“He never turned anyone down a sip of water.<\/p>\n

“He’d be lucky to get two sips out of it by the time everyone else had leeched off him.”<\/p>\n

A quiet legacy<\/p>\n

Will Long was a first-year ringer at Brightlands Station near Cloncurry when he first met Wilson, then head stockmen.<\/p>\n

“He’s just so good with cattle and puts you in the right place, and makes you aware of everything you need to know,” Mr Long said.<\/p>\n

The pair soon became good mates.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Before his death, Wilson had plans to return home and work as a chopper pilot. (Supplied: Anne Sprague)<\/p>\n

Mr Long said Wilson taught him to be a leader.<\/p>\n

“If you [were] doing something wrong, he’d make sure next time you were doing it right, instead of letting everyone get away with doing the wrong thing.”<\/p>\n

Mr Magoffin agreed.<\/p>\n

“I think, in huge ways \u2014 and I’ve thought this for years \u2014 Wilson could instil a lot of confidence in you,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I started flying 12 months before Wilson, and I remember one of the reasons I felt so confident getting my licence was I knew Wilson would be there.<\/p>\n

“If he lived to 80 years old, they could have written a book on him.<\/p>\n

“We might yet still.”<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Wilson made a “big difference” no matter what he did. (Supplied: Anne Sprague)<\/p>\n

Ms Sprague said she hoped Wilson would be remembered as a tenacious, loyal and gentle soul.<\/p>\n

“He was just a good bloke,” she said.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot of good blokes out there, it’s just some of them don’t get taken so early.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anne Sprague will never forget watching her son learn to ride a bike in the yard on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,249765,51800,1154,1300,134,4892,349076,349078,168627,168622,349077,349075],"class_list":["post-720076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blackall","tag-chopper","tag-crash","tag-death","tag-entertainment","tag-helicopter","tag-kowanyama","tag-mbh","tag-mustering","tag-r22-helicopter","tag-rutland-plains","tag-wilson-sprague"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720076","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=720076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}