Emotions running high during final week of evidence at Outback Wrangler Matt Wright’s Northern Territory trial

Covertly recorded conversations, buck’s party bombshells and a mother’s anguish at being told her son would not survive a fatal chopper crash were all laid bare this week as Outback Wrangler Matt Wright’s criminal trial draws to a close.

Mr Wright is fighting three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice in relation to investigations into the crash that killed his Netflix co-star Chris Wilson and left pilot Sebastian Robinson paraplegic.

Mr Robinson, 32, was flying Mr Wright’s Robinson R44, VH-IDW, when it crashed during a crocodile egg collecting mission in February 2022.

His mum Noelene Chellingworth this week told the NT supreme court that she found out about the fatal crash from Mr Wright’s employee Morgan Vidler who called her at about 11am that day.

“He just said that there was a deceased person,” she recalled.

She did not know if her son was still alive so drove to Darwin Hospital where she waited for the CareFlight chopper to land at 5pm.

“They took (my sister) Stacey and I into a room and they literally told me that, with all the trauma to Sebastian’s body, he was unlikely to survive that night,” she said.

“They said … he would not probably survive and to prepare the family.”

Mr Robinson’s mum, brothers and girlfriend all testified this week.

The court also heard about a series of events that culminated with Mr Wright visiting Mr Robinson at the Royal Brisbane Hospital to, as the Crown alleges, “put the hard word on him”.

At the time of the crash, Mr Robinson lived and had a hangar on Mick Burns’ sprawling Darwin property.

Its caretaker, Glen Smith, told the court that the morning after the crash, pilot Jock Purcell texted him, asking to be let in the automatic gate.

Mr Smith said he opened the gate for Mr Purcell, who went to Mr Robinson’s hangar but did not reveal why he was there.

He told the court that the next day, on March 2, Mr Wright – who had his own remote control for the gate – turned up at the property with an unidentified man.

Mr Smith said he could see – from his office window – Mr Wright and the man at Mr Robinson’s hangar before the pair drove to the injured pilot’s cottage and went inside.

“Within a few minutes I noticed the car leave,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ms Chellingworth had arrived in Brisbane to find her son “unconscious in an induced coma”.

Mr Wright’s operations manager Tim Johnston then contacted her, asking to visit.

“He also said that Matt has asked him to get Sebastian’s diary,” she said.

“I actually agreed, because I was in such a state, I thought, ‘Oh well, why not, you know?”

Mr Johnston visited Mr Robinson, in his private hospital room, on March 3

After five minutes, Mr Johnston left his bedside and sat outside with Mr Robinson’s brother Jacob and girlfriend Rhanii Lee.

“He asked for a book,” Ms Lee recalled.

“I can’t remember if it was an MR or a logbook. The book was handed to him, but then he asked for Sebastian’s phone.

“He said Matt also mentioned to grab Sebby’s phone and we thought, ‘no’, so we didn’t hand him the phone.”

Mr Johnston, who considers the celebrity croc-wrangler a “close friend”, told the court that another man, Jai Tomlinson, had put him up to it.

Under the intense scrutiny of Crown Prosecutor Jason Gullaci SC, Mr Johnston denied knowing what items he was supposed to collect from Mr Robinson.

“Noelene gave me the first lot and I think it was Seb’s brother who gave me the second lot,” he said.

“A little bit of paper for the first lot and the second lot was a diary and a phone.

“Like, a quarter size folded up A4 bit of paper.

“I didn’t end up actually taking the phone. I got the diary.”

Mr Gullaci asked Mr Johnston “why on earth” he would try to take Mr Robinson’s phone.

Mr Johnston said “it was produced in front of me to bring back to Darwin” and that he “thought I was doing them a favour”.

“What favour are you doing them by taking the phone thousands of kilometres away?” the prosecutor asked.

“I mean, really, the reality is that if he’s regaining consciousness, he might want to call his girlfriend, he might want to call his mum, he might want to put a bet on the fifth race at Dapto. He might need his phone, mightn’t he? And having it in another state is not very helpful, is it?

“And at the time you knew you weren’t doing any - you were part of the plan to hide the under recording of (helicopter) hours, weren’t you, Mr Johnston?”

Mr Johnston replied: “disagree”.

Mr Johnston said he did not speak to Mr Wright before going to the hospital but called him immediately after leaving.

Mr Gullaci asked if he there would be a record of that call and Mr Johnston assured him there would be.

But the officer in charge of the police investigation, Detective Senior Sergeant Corey Borton, later told the court there was no phone record of Mr Johnston calling Mr Wright or his wife on March 3 or 4 in 2022.

Mr Johnston said he is “pretty sure” the “little bit of folded paper” was the MR for IDW, which he took back to Darwin before Mr Wright “visited our house and picked it up”.

“You see, again, the reason – the very reason why – even on your version of events that you didn’t ring Mr Tomlinson is because Mr Tomlinson had nothing to do with this whole enterprise, did he?” Mr Gullaci asked.

“He didn’t ask you to get these documents – it was Matt Wright, isn’t that the case?”

Mr Johnston denied that, saying “no, it’s not”.

Mr Gullaci then asked the witness if he understood what perjury means.

“You’re just not prepared – it doesn’t matter what you’re confronted with – you will stick to the Matt Wright party line until the end, won’t you?” he asked

“At risk of exposing yourself to perjury, you’re prepared to do it. That’s how loyal you are.”

A week after Mr Johnston’s hospital visit, Mr Wright and his wife Kaia attended Royal Brisbane Hospital.

“I remember that it was Sebastian holding the phone and Matt was standing beside him and scrolling on Sebastian’s phone and saying, ‘You need to delete, delete, delete’,” Ms Chellingworth said.

She told the jury Mr Wright had documents with him including “a spreadsheet that was all different colour-coded”.

Mr Wright took it with him when he left the hospital but left two A4 documents at the hospital, which she photographed and later provided to investigators.

“(Mr Wright) said to Sebastian that he would like to move hours from IDW over to ZXZ,” she said.

“I asked Matt, ‘Why are you doing this?’ He sort of fobbed me off and said, you know, he’s just cleaning up stuff.”

Mr Wright returned to RBH on March 13.

“He asked Sebastian again about moving hours across from IDW to ZXZ and Sebastian said that he did not feel comfortable doing that because ZXZ is not rated to have dual hooks on it and all the hours that he wanted to transfer over is all the areas where they were slinging and you needed dual hooks,” Ms Chellingworth said.

“Sebastian said ‘no’ and Mr Wright said words to the effect of, ‘We can work around it’ or ‘I can work around it’.”

Mr Wright’s defence barrister David Edwardson KC suggested that Mr Wright was simply trying to help Mr Robinson “get his paperwork up to date” because Mr Robinson was operating under Mr Wright’s Air Operator’s Certificate and that the pilot’s family had concocted their claims against his client. Each of them rejected this.

Mr Robinson’s uncle Jim Carew was at RBH when Mr Wright returned on March 13.

“I remember him saying something about swapping hours or assigning hours I believe was the term that they used,” he told the jury.

Mr Carew said Mr Wright had brought with him a “large sheet of paper, perhaps A3 size” with “writing all over it”.

“It had lines drawn over it … not really a spreadsheet but certainly ruled lines and things on it,” he said.

The Brisbane-based retiree said that “another character” then turned up, who the court has heard was Mr Tomlinson.

The 45-year-old confirmed he visited Mr Robinson in hospital with Mr Wright but denied hearing any talk of “flight records or hours or anything like that”.

Mr Tomlinson said he was unaware of Mr Johnston’s earlier hospital visit and denied asking him to retrieve any items from Mr Robinson.

During Mr Tomlinson’s examination, the jury was played covert surveillance recordings of conversations between himself, Mr Wright and Kaia Wright at the Wright’s Palm Beach home in September 2022.

In the conversations the men allegedly discuss what happened at the crash site, the investigations and VH-IDW’s maintenance release.

Mr Wright can allegedly be heard telling Mr Tomlinson to “just torch it” and “just burn the c---” in relation to the destroyed chopper’s Maintenance Release (MR), which is related to count three.

Mr Tomlinson told the court he does not remember having the conversations, what they had been discussing or any context.

The “objectively successful” director of his own civil construction company answered almost every question with “not that I remember” or “I don’t know”, leading the prosecutor to ask if he suffered from any “cognitive issues”, which he denied.

Earlier in the week, the court heard from Mr Robinson’s brother Zaccarie Chellingworth who was questioned about his sibling’s drug use.

Mr Edwardson asked the witness if he knew his brother used cocaine.

“I was aware of my brother’s cocaine use . . . that it was few and far between,” he said

“He did not take drugs on a regular occasion. I’m his big brother so I know.”

Mr Edwardson pressed the witness to reveal the time and place he had seen Mr Robinson consume cocaine.

“It was my buck’s party on Matt Wright’s boat, CAT5,” he said.

The trial, before Acting Justice Alan Blow, continues on Monday.