Croc Wrangler: Dodgy helicopters, croc eggs, police bugs – the questions we couldn't answer

I'm Sarah Konoski, and I've got a special episode of Conversations to share.

Kathleen Folbeck telling her own story.

For two decades, Kathleen was locked up in prison, wrongly convicted of the deaths of her four children, until friendship and science set her free.

I'm in prison accused of murdering my children.

I didn't physically do it, but carried something that did.

Hear my interview with Kathleen Folbeek right now on the ABC Listen app: ABC Listen, Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

All the questions we couldn't answer until now.

I'm ABC Court reporter Olivana Lothoris.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

Welcome to the case of the Crock Wrangler.

He's one of the territory's biggest stars.

Flashing cameras and waiting reporters as Netflix star Matt Wright fronted quarters.

The territory tourism operator is facing three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

This was a tragic event that took the life of the crocodile egg collector.

Mr.

Wright strenuously denies any wrongdoing.

One of my favourite things about making this podcast is the feedback and the messages we get from all of you.

There's so many wonderful questions.

Your curiosity seems to know no limits, really.

And unfortunately, there's a lot that we can't talk about during the trial.

So we'll get all these questions and often we're not able to answer them because as we talked about, if it doesn't go in front of the jury, it's not something we can reveal while proceedings are in process.

But now things have wrapped up, Ollie, we've got a little bit more freedom to dive into some of this detail, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And there's been so many fascinating little twists and turns and details in this case that naturally would spark curiosity and questions.

So, it's great to be able to finally answer some of those things.

I always feel so guilty when I see a great question that I know the answer to, and I know you two know the answer to, but we have to wait for something like this.

So, it's great to have Ollie, you here, and also Matt Garrick, a senior reporter from the ABC's NT Newsroom, joining us as well.

Matt, I'm sure you are bursting with facts and details for this episode.

Great to be here, Stocky, and absolutely.

Let's not delay too much longer.

If you are new here, we do have an email address.

It is the caseov at abc.net.au.

I highly recommend you getting in touch with really anything.

You know, we get a wider range of feedback, assistance, questions.

So, if there's anything you're wondering about or you find yourself wondering about when you're listening to any of these podcasts, please get in touch.

I'm going to start today with a question from Vanessa in Wollongong.

Now, when you're thinking about this question, remember that the crash that kind of started all of this happened while there were a couple of guys out collecting crocodile eggs.

You You know, another bloke hanging underneath a helicopter on a rope, being dropped onto crocodile nests, and basically gathering up eggs, like you would imagine in a cartoon, but this is happening across the Northern Territory.

And Vanessa's question is, Hi, guys, love the podcast.

Apologies if this is a question that has been covered, but in terms of the actual crash site and the picture that I've created in my mind of the site, were there crocs when the crash occurred, or did the crash occur away from the actual crocodile nests?

I actually visited one of Matt Wright's croc tours a few years ago where the guide had told us that crocs are attracted to noise and movement.

This is so fascinating, and there's so many things to pick apart with crocodile egg collecting just as an industry and as a business and practice.

And something that, yeah, certainly I know that I've been learning a lot about through this trial.

Matt, I'm sure you're the same.

In terms of the actual sort of geographics of the crash site, obviously these guys were heading out to an area that is very well known for having a high population of saltwater crocodiles.

It's big big country, hence why they were out there and they had sort of specific locations where these nests were that the various helicopters were going to be visiting.

But obviously it's quite specific.

These locations are, you know, they're known locations that they go and visit.

Obviously Sebastian Robinson and Chris Wilson didn't make it to that specific location that they were heading to.

However, the crash did occur in sort of swampland.

And as we know in the Northern Territory, wherever there's water, there's probably a crocodile in the Northern Territory.

This was sort of swampy bushland.

We didn't hear any evidence through the trial that there was a concern at the crash site about crocodiles.

So whether that was just something that wasn't spoken about or whether that wasn't a concern, I can't say for sure.

But it wasn't as though they crashed right next to a crocodile nest from what we could gain.

or what we could glean from the evidence in the trial.

Interestingly, I actually was looking back at some of the episodes of Wild Croc Territory, which was on National Geographic a few years ago, and it was so interesting to see how the practice actually looks and to be able to watch these guys doing this crocodile egg collecting.

And the noise thing was fascinating.

Like Matt Wright was telling his cameraman to stop making any noises because as he was sort of placing the eggs into the crates, he was saying, I need to be able to listen to hear the croc.

You can't see them, but you can hear them coming because of all the long grass it's terrifying stuff yeah just surrounded by water and again when there's water there's crocodiles so yeah really um kind of intense work that these guys are doing um i remember hearing during the trial um that they have these like long poles that they use to poke around to see if there's a crocodile there and if one gets close they just kind of like poke it on the back leg and it scurries away and we actually have a crocodile egg collecting first-hand experience in the case of team executive producer claire Rawlinson has worked in the Northern Territory before and been out with a crock egg collection team to do this.

Claire, what's it like?

I mean, we're talking about, you know, the silence and, you know, the crocodiles being around.

I mean, what's that whole experience like?

Yeah, that's right, Stocky.

I actually was in one of the crews where instead of being hung by a sling, we just were dropped in the vicinity of a crocodile nest.

And then we waded through the water in a team of, I think it was just three of us.

And there were, I remember asking them that morning, is not one of you going to bring a gun in case a crocodile comes?

And they said, no, we used to do that, but then we accidentally shot one of each other.

So we decided it's safer to just have a paddle.

And so they had, it wasn't, it was a paddle, it wasn't a pole, but, you know, the leader would sort of carve away through this shoulder height grass in the swamp that you're waist deep in water with the paddle, poking as he's going.

And then you approach the crocodile nest, you sort of, that felt like the safest part, to be honest, because you could be above the, like you had a view of the horizon.

So when you got up onto the crocodile nest, you would just sit there, put the eggs carefully into this eski.

But there was a moment also where the leader, he did a little test of the, it's almost like there's a moat that's around the nest.

And so he slaps the water and he says, just wait, this is the moment where if there's a crocodile here, they will just, all I can say is explode out of the water.

So that was probably the most hair-raising part of the trip.

But he slaps the water, no crocodile.

And then, honestly, I do remember, as weird as this sounds, there was a sense after that of real peace because the quietness is a thing.

Like in that environment, when in this case, the chopper wasn't hanging us, it had left.

It was so quiet.

And we were all just sitting on the top of this nest, carefully putting putting these beautiful, like glowing eggs into an eski.

And

yeah, it just, it was a bizarre sort of incongruous mix of peace and terror within the same sort of half-hour period.

Yeah, and I was lucky that even though, you know, as we all know, in the Northern Territory where there's water, there are crocodiles, we didn't see a crocodile on my drop.

The other team that was on the same morning's mission, they did see a crocodile.

One of them actually stepped on it and

it just actually just swam away, they said, and they all laughed about how it was like, well, it looked like he was surfing, which I guess this is the thrills that they get.

But luckily,

no crocodile on my drop.

But they were more concerned, honestly, about the risk of bacterial infection from the water, where there's a lot of, there's obviously like feces from crocodiles, there's all sorts of who knows what in that swampy water.

And so would, we had to tape, gaffer tape our clothing to our socks, you know, around our belts and everything so that there was no part of your skin that would touch the water.

And yet, yeah, it's funny that that was actually the bigger concern.

That and in my view, the helicopter experience.

Wow.

I am absolutely rocked by that.

Incredible.

That was incredible.

Incredible.

Yeah, truly

wild stuff and an incredible kind of firsthand experience of what that was like.

Also great to prove that Claire Rawlinson, the executive producer of this podcast, is a real person, not just a name you hear at the end of the end of the pod.

Yeah, I've been some kind of wild places for stories, including stories on crocodiles, but never sat on top of a crocodile nest.

So yeah, I think I don't want to be that close to a crocodile.

A few meters is probably too close.

Hundreds of meters is my preferred distance from any crocodile, I think.

So wonderful question, Vanessa.

We have another one here from Stuart in Adelaide.

This one is about a kind of scene that we painted throughout the trial.

You know, we were talking about the arrival of various characters to and from court.

And in this one, we would see Matt Wright and his lawyers and his wife arriving at court in, you know, the cowboy boots and the jeans and that sort of classic, you know, cowboy attire that a lot of them were getting around in.

This one from Stuart in Adelaide is, hi team, loving the pod.

I have a question regarding Matt.

I've seen photos of him entering and exiting the court throughout the case.

I take it that he isn't currently in custody.

Why is that?

I know that during the Aaron Patterson trial she was in custody.

What's the difference here?

Yeah, so there are always differences depending on the charges that someone is facing that will often sort of determine whether or not someone is granted bail, what conditions, bail conditions they're subjected to.

Matt Wright was on bail right throughout these proceedings.

It was deemed that he wasn't sort of a risk to the community.

You know, sometimes if someone has been charged with a violent offence or they've got a criminal history, there's various sort of considerations that a court will need to take into account when deciding whether they should allow someone to remain on bail throughout the course of their proceedings.

Of course, we know that these things take so long, so often it can be the case that someone might spend a really long time in custody on remote.

remand waiting for their matter to be dealt with and so that's another consideration like will they spend more time on remand than they would uh you know if they were to potentially be found guilty and be sentenced for an offence so of course matt wright obviously not charged with any sort of violent offending no criminal history or anything like that he was deemed not to be a flight risk he had bail certain bail conditions that he had to kind of comply with but aside from that the court basically said it's perfectly acceptable for you to be out on bail throughout the course of the proceedings and then that bail was then extended uh once he was found guilty.

When he was found guilty was the only point during the trial where there was really a conversation of will Matt Wright be remanded in custody.

The prosecutor laid out pretty quickly that he was seeking a term of imprisonment for Wright after that guilty verdict was handed down.

And then it became this to and fro with Wright's barrister and the judge involved as well to decide that Wright's bail would indeed be extended.

Yep.

Thank you, Matt.

Thank you, Ollie.

Great question, Stuart.

Thank you for that.

Something that has been really central to the trial of Matt Wright was the maintenance and maintaining of helicopters throughout.

So, you know, this helicopter crash happened in early 2022.

And something that we discovered at the start of the trial was that, you know, the kind of overlooking of maintenance or the avoidance of maintenance was something that was quite common in the helicopter industry in the Northern Territory.

And we had a lot of questions about this.

You know, something we heard was that what Matt Matt Wright's company, Hellybrook, would do, what people working for Matt Wright would regularly do, and what Matt Wright would do as well, is they would disconnect something called a Hobbs meter, which is like an odometer for the helicopter that tells you how much time that helicopter is spending in the air.

We have a question here from Gaynor in Melbourne.

Gaynor writes, hello, and thank you for the Case Off podcast series.

It's been a great segue from the mushroom case to the crocodile wrangler.

Question.

You've mentioned in this podcast that disconnecting the Hobbs meter is a common practice in aviation.

Has this been supported by evidence or research?

Or is this just the testimony testimony of one witness?

As I understand it, aviation is regulated for safety of pilots and passengers.

Matt Garrick, I want to put this one to you because you've just done a huge story on the safety of the helicopter industry, a lot of the fallout from this.

And we'll put a link to that story in the show notes of this episode so people can follow up on that.

But yeah, I mean, you know, is that discussion of disconnecting of Hobbes meters, you know, how that's a common practice, you know, what evidence is there to support that?

What have you found in your reporting?

Yeah, thanks, Docie.

And Gaynor, it's a really

pertinent and timely question off the back of this trial and one that we really wanted to look into more.

During the trial, both the prosecution and the defence agreed there was wide, this, that Matt Wright, while he was disconnecting his Hobbes meter, as were some of his pilots that worked for him, they agreed that it was widespread throughout the industry, throughout the aviation industry, particularly in northern Australia.

In my research, I talked to some who said it's not just the north, it's particularly centered around rural and regional Australia.

Part of the issue is the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, they have a number of inspectors, perhaps in some places, a limited number of inspectors who are actually able to get out there and check helicopters and actually make sure everyone is doing the right thing.

CASA, as they're known, they say that they are doing, you know, these inspections.

They do unannounced inspections.

They do ones that are regulations.

So they say that they are doing their job.

However, we've talked to whistleblowers from within the industry who have said this is a widespread practice and operators are doing it essentially because of money.

Basically, they say it's become habitual throughout the industry where some operators are forced to follow suit other operators who are already doing it, misrecording their hours, pulling out their Hobbs meters to do so, because they then don't have to pay for costly required maintenance.

So they can then charge lower contract fees or they can go to tender with a lower price because their overheads are lower because they're not going to do these maintenance that is required by regulation as often.

So then a company down the road who sees this and loses out on a tender bid kind of has to go, well, it's either follow suit or I am or my business goes under so what we've seen is this industry you know according to people within the industry that it's been allowed to fester and it's essentially taken over and become commonplace we talked to one aircraft maintenance engineer Greg Hooper here's a little bit about what he had to say about it

I believe that the cat's out of the bag as far as flight recording of of hours on these machines.

I don't think it should be covered up.

I think it should be

put out there that this practice is common and widespread.

I think CASA needs more support in their ability to investigate these issues.

I believe the industry really needs to step up and change the way that they do things.

It's about time, I think, that we really just draw a line in the sand and move on, start doing things properly.

Yeah, really interesting to kind of hear all that, Matt.

And yeah, as I mentioned, we'll put your reporting in the show notes this episode so people can have a look and read a bit more deeply on that.

You know, speaking of the emails that we get to the case of at abc.net.au, you know, you're talking there about the kind of the overheads and the costs around that.

We had an email from someone who said they worked in the helicopter industry, kind of breaking down some of those costs for us, kind of pointing out, look, if you're doing your 2200-hour service, which is the big service on an R44 helicopter, Robinson helicopters, this is the helicopter that crashed in the Northern Territory, pointing out if you're pushing that back, yeah, your overheads are less.

So you have to spend less.

It costs you less

to run this machine.

And, you know, we heard during the trial as well how expensive those overhauls are.

You know, you're looking in, you know, I think it was $400,000 to $500,000 or so for one of those big overhauls.

So yeah, a lot of money involved.

in that.

Speaking of the helicopter questions, we have another one here from Tori.

Tori writes, hi, loving the podcast.

Also listened to the mushroom trial, so I had to continue with this one.

I was wondering if it's likely Matt Wright or anyone else will face charges for not recording helicopter hours properly and disconnecting the Hobbs meter.

Thanks so much for your question, Tori.

So

Matt Wright is facing other charges in separate proceedings outside of the trial, and they are brought by WorkSafe NT, who are our work safety regulator here in the Northern Territory.

And essentially, they have charged Matt Wright and his company, Hellybrook, with reckless conduct for failing in their duties under work health and safety legislation.

Those charges are still making their way through the courts and we haven't heard a great deal of detail about what the allegations are and what sort of the case will sort of consist of.

But now that the trial is wrapped up, we are expecting to hear a little bit more about where those proceedings go and hopefully we'll be able to keep you updated.

Yeah, that's right, Ollian.

Separate to those work safe charges, there have also been some penalties put upon Hellybrook by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

In November 2024, Matt Wright's company was grounded.

His air operator's certificate was cancelled under the Civil Aviation Act, and Hellebrook was found to be responsible for a number of breaches, including a failure to record pilot flight times.

It said the operator's personnel engaged in fraudulent conduct that involved the falsification of maintenance records.

The operator allowed aircraft to be operated while the time in service was not being recorded.

The operator allowed the reckless operation of aircraft during tourist and filming operations and the breaches go on from there.

So Hellybrook, I did an ASIC search

in the wake of the trial and Hellybrook is now in the process of being liquidated, meaning it's being wound up it's in external administration and Matt Wright's company Hellybrook is not allowed to fly choppers

Wow Tori great question you you helped us cover a lot of ground there and yeah something that you know has come up a lot during this trial you know as we've mentioned these guys were out collecting crocodile eggs when this crash occurred and that setting and what is happening there is one of the really kind of interesting and compelling parts of this story just the act of collecting crocodile eggs so they can be taken to crocodile farms and grown for their meat and their skin, which is often used for, you know, luxury handbags.

And, you know, you go to any pub in the Northern Territory, there'll be a crock burger on the menu or something like that.

So question here from Rhee from Swansea in South Wales, in the UK.

Hey, Stocky and Ollie, loving how you've developed the podcast following Mushroom Case Daily.

I don't understand why crocodiles can't lay eggs in captivity.

It would seem a much safer and cheaper business model.

What am I missing?

Also, chuckling after Stocky said he'd wear his thongs, ruggers, and t-shirt in the dry season.

Thongs in the UK are something very different.

Trying to get the image out of my head.

Well, Rhea, I was, you know, potentially deliberately vague in my description of my outfit in the Northern Territory.

You never know what I get around it up there.

But Ollie, Matt,

why aren't we seeing crocodiles bred in captivity for these things?

Why have we got guys going out and collecting eggs when they're hanging from a rope underneath a helicopter?

Oh my gosh, Rhea, thank you so much for that question.

That has made my day.

In terms of crocodile egg collecting, yeah, absolutely.

I mean it's an extraordinarily dangerous thing that these guys are out there doing.

But I guess, you know, the most obvious answer is just if it wasn't an effective business model, they wouldn't be doing it.

From my understanding, there is sort of a quality element to this piece of the puzzle.

So the eggs that you collect from the wild may be of a higher quality than what you might get if you're just breeding them constantly in captivity.

Also, the Northern Territory just has an incredible number of crocodiles.

A few decades ago, there was a really massive culling of saltwater crocodiles and it almost destroyed the population at that time.

And then since then, we've just seen this incredible boom in numbers and sort of it's gotten to the point now where the government is having to reconsider how to manage crocodile.

population numbers.

So there is also sort of a mutual benefit between sort of controlling crocodile numbers in the wild.

Also traditional owners do get a royalty when crocodile eggs are taken from various parts of the NT.

So not only is it an extremely profitable business, I think the crocodile farming industry in the Northern Territory is valued at over $100 million a year,

which is an incredible amount of money for the little NT.

And so, you know, it's an extremely profitable business and does have those sort of mutual benefits for traditional owners and for uh safety reasons you mentioned uh the how many crocs there are now what we've seen over recent years uh re is that crocs have been getting more and more into tourist spots we saw i think it was the year before last a crocodile was found in one of our most popular water holes in Wongai Falls in Litchfield National Park, a saltwater crocodile.

So this is, you know, the point that it's at.

And how do you regulate these numbers when they're at such a level?

So there was an ongoing discussion about culling.

Do you do you start culling again?

They eventually ruled no, that, you know, that they were at a, I think they might have upped the numbers slightly, actually.

But to the sustainability of crock egg collection, just listening to some of Mick Burns's evidence during the trial of Matt Riot.

Mick Burns, who's a leading figure in the crocodile industry in the Northern Territory, he was asked, are there limits of how many crocodile eggs you can collect per season?

He said there is.

But because there has been such a recovery of the population of crocodiles across the top end, they're not reaching those capacity numbers as they go out farming.

So at this stage, it seems like it is being done sustainably.

As Ollie mentioned, there's also that industry and royalty benefit that traditional owners get.

Mick Burns also talked talked about how he's got partnerships with a traditional owner group in northeast Arnhem Land where they actually help with the farming of the crocodile.

So it's not just royalties that they get, they also get a stake in the industry, in employment as well.

Yep, wonderful question, Ree.

Thank you, Matt.

Thank you, Ollie.

Something else that was really interesting from this trial, something we couldn't talk about too deeply at the time, was the way that some of the evidence was gathered in this trial.

You know, we had secret recordings, we had police bugs, and we had a lot of questions about how the police were able to collect some of these things.

I've got a question here from Glynn in Perth.

Glynn says, Hi, team, thanks for producing an awesome podcast, both this one and Mushroom Lunch.

As I'm listening, I'm wondering beyond the stuff we see on dramatic American TVs and movies, what are the rules and legalities around wiretapping/slash bugging?

I can understand the logistics where a witness is wearing a wire, but how do the police legally install a bug in someone's house?

Break and enter under a warrant?

Question mark?

Thanks for your question, Glynn.

Yes, police definitely need a warrant to be able to do any of this kind of covert recording.

We know that there were obviously, you know, recordings taken from inside Matt Wright's home.

He also had his phone tapped for months.

I mean, all of these covert recordings that we heard throughout the course of this trial were taken over several months, and police definitely would have had to, you know, follow certain processes contained in legislation in order to be able to do that appropriately and legally.

And so, yeah, police would have had to follow certain processes and laws to make sure that that covert recording is done within the scope of their powers and within the scope of the legislation.

Just out of interest as well, just to add to that, Glynn, the NT Ombudsman every year has to publish how many of these warrants have been agreed upon, specifically in relation to surveillance, so that there is some public information out there about how many of these bugs are getting done by NT police every year.

Yeah, I'd love to go through that document.

I'm sure they're not putting in the detail that I really want to see in there as, you know, who and why, but at least having the number and an idea of the scope of it is really interesting.

Absolutely, Stocky, and often it's not that many.

You know, you would be, I guess we've got a reasonably small population, but for example, the year I'm looking at, which is 2023, there's 13 warrants undertaken that year so you can see how they focus these big investigations into it I wonder how many of them were solely for Matt Wright as well you know those are the period the investigation would have been happening so

yeah no great great detail Matt thank you Ollie great question Glynn as well another one on the police bugs here from Beck Beck's question is hi team wondering why was the quality of the recording so bad did something happen surely in the modern world the police have access to good a v bugs.

Now this is in relation to charge three, of Matt Wright's attempting to pervert the course of justice charges.

This hinged on a conversation that had been heard by a bug in Matt Wright's home.

And as we've talked about in the trial, the audio of this was

really, really quite bad.

This was a charge that the jury couldn't reach a decision on.

So obviously couldn't hear what the prosecution was saying was in that conversation.

But yeah, Ollie,

why was the quality of the recordings so bad?

Well, I guess there's a a few layers to this.

The first one being, you know, we heard the quality difference between the recordings taken on that bug inside the home and then the recordings taken from those tapped phone calls.

And the tapped phone calls were really almost crystal clear.

Like you really could hear both sides of the conversation fairly well, whereas the ones inside the home really were difficult.

And we heard a bit about through evidence of the police officer or the investigator who was sort of responsible for listening through these bugged house recordings and we learnt a bit about how they work.

So obviously there would be a placement question so we don't know where that device was and you know presumably depending on where it's been placed that would impact how clearly you can hear various conversations but also even though it's sort of on all the time it's not necessarily recording or collecting sound.

The sound has to reach above a certain volume for it to even start picking up noise.

And so you heard at the start of various different recordings sort of loud bangs.

We heard the kids yelling in the background, a loud movie on.

Because it starts to record at a certain volume threshold, you sometimes get lots of layers of noises, different people talking over each other, different sounds.

Maybe the conversation is broken up.

The recording might start with a loud part of the conversation and then if they go into a different room or if the volume drops below that threshold, the recording stops.

So there's that element as well.

And then we heard from the defence that the two men involved in that recording, Matt Wright and his friend Jai Tomlinson,

were pissed during the conversation.

They'd had a few drinks and so they're sort of slurring their words and that sort of thing as well, which also made it quite difficult to hear.

One of the clearer things we heard in that recording was Matt Wright burping.

And so, yeah, a few elements as to why that recording was so challenging to hear.

It was really interesting.

I mean, this is the bugged conversation in the house, but when we were having the bugged phone calls played to the court, I mean, the quality of them was fantastic.

I mean, it was like you were on the phone to these people.

And for a moment, when I was listening to them, I thought they were people wearing a wire.

It sounded as though it's a conversation two people were having outside.

You know, obviously, two people have their phones on speaker or something.

It just sounded like they were in the same place at the same time.

And I thought, oh my God, are these people wearing a wire?

Is Matt Wright going to listen to this conversation and be like, hang on, this person, I remember standing there next to them, they were wearing a wire during this.

And I was clarified quite quickly, I think, in one of the chats that we were having that, no, no, Stoki, these are tap phone calls.

You're getting ahead of yourself.

But yeah, the quality of them was, I was really surprised with how good that quality was, a testament to, I guess, the engineering in our phones these days about how easy it was to hear some of those conversations.

But yeah, Beck, great question.

Alec, thank thank you for getting us through that one.

Nearing the end here, so we've got a couple of little lighter ones.

And this is a really interesting one here from Cameron.

He says, the number and nature of documents presented by both sides sounds overwhelming.

Based on what you've told us, it sounds like the Tassie judge, Justice Blow, might be easily overwhelmed.

I think that's an exaggeration of what we were saying.

Justice Blow, very good at his job, just forgot about the jury a couple of times.

Cameron's question is: How does Justice Blow keep his head in the game and on the correct documents?

Does he have a support person like the pilot Seb?

Well, I think Acting Justice Blow, he's a very well-respected judge, and you know, he would have handled many, many trials, and trials are always complex.

Even the most basic of trials would involve many, many different bits of evidence and all sorts of things.

And, you know, as a judge with many years of experience, he would be very well versed in making sure that he's across exactly what's happening.

Judges do have judges' associates though who are very helpful, both the prosecution and the defence.

Also, it's not just one lawyer.

You know, we've talked a lot about

David Edwardson, KC, and Jason Galachi, SC.

They also have other lawyers helping them.

We had Kate Thomas on the side of the prosecution and we also had Luke Officer on the side of the defence.

So there are many people that are sort of helping to make sure that the court runs smoothly and to kind of keep across things like documents.

As for Acting Justice Alan Blow, though, I don't think he would have had any issues making sure that he was across everything that was happening in the court.

He's a very experienced judge.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on, but, you know, they've got processes and systems and, yeah, judges' associates, as Ollie's mentioned, Cameron.

Question here from Cass.

Cass writes, good afternoon, Croc case team.

This has been so interesting, such a different case than I've ever heard before.

On to the question, and it's not exactly about the case, but the reporters and lawyers.

are they friends I imagine in Darwin the social circles are smaller and would overlap quite a bit Cass such a great question and again being a court reporter I do find the dynamics between lawyers and journalists and the people involved such an interesting part of this whole little court bubble that we're sort of all a part of and especially in cases like this where it is so intense it's not just one or two days it's you know five weeks or six weeks that we were sort of in this in this court together every single day.

I suppose, you know, the dynamics can change day to day.

I mean, we saw that day where a current affair had published that story, and I would not be describing us as friends with the defense on that day.

We were public enemy number one.

But, you know, I guess there's, yeah, various different stages.

Obviously, the lawyers are understandably wary of media sometimes.

We're there to do our job, they're there to do theirs.

Their loyalty isn't to media, it's to their client and to trying to to make sure that the court process runs smoothly.

And to be honest, media isn't always necessarily going to be beneficial or helpful all the time.

There are other cases where, you know, there is a benefit to having the media kind of on side.

And, you know, for example, we saw that at the end of the trial, once a verdict had been handed down, the families were able to give statements and to sort of share their views and express those feelings.

And it's helpful to have media there to be able to communicate that.

And also, you know, fair and accurate court reporting is a part of our open justice system.

It's about sharing what's happening in these cases to the public.

So in a sense, everybody has a sort of vested interest in making sure that that is something that happens.

But yeah, you know, obviously we do try as journalists to make sure that we have good working relationships with lawyers on both sides of these cases.

I'm a big snacker, as everybody will know after this trial.

I'm a big snack queen.

And, you know, I was sharing some of my red frogs and sour squirms with the various lawyers.

So, yeah, we try to keep them on side.

And, Cass, if I can even put it in this way, it's not just the journalists and lawyers.

If you think about the politicians, the media advisors, sometimes the court defendants themselves come 5 p.m., we're often all squeezed into the same small pub at the end of the day.

So, you know,

sometimes you can give all these different types of people a cheers and sometimes you just don't want to get thrown to the crocs for crock food.

So it's about just, you know, living in this small town and being able to, you know, separate work from the life that comes after it as well.

Oh, look, Matt, it's an incredible insight into working and living in Darwin, which, you know, I think we should highlight is a capital city.

You know, give it a bit of credit up there.

But, no, I have really enjoyed both of you joining us for this and answering all these questions.

There is one that we,

you know, more of a comment, I suppose, one from Murray that I do want to shout out.

After our, before our verdict episode, I should say, Ollie was pointing out that there were eight possible outcomes for the different variations of the three charges that Matt Wright was facing and where the verdict could have gone.

We realised a hung jury was one of them.

And then we said there were nine outcomes.

Then we had an email from Murray.

They did the maths and showed that there were 27 possible outcomes with a hung jury on the various counts.

So this would have been complicated even further by the fact we now know we could have had any variation of a hung jury on individual charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

So that 27 will increase by an order of magnitude.

I cannot wrap my head around, but I'm looking forward to Murray's next email breaking down the various aspects of that.

So the case of at abc.net.au.

Murray is where you can get in touch with us.

We'll be back with another episode on Thursday of this week.

We're going to be talking through what we really think about this trial, giving you our analysis of the last five or six weeks.

So make sure you hang around for that.

Also from next week, we're going to be diving into our next case, the case of the romance scam following the story of Donna Nelson.

She's a Perth woman who was arrested with two kilos of methamphetamine in Tokyo airport in 2023.

She says she was tricked by her boyfriend and the story really is quite incredible.

So make sure you grab yourself the ABC Listen app and you'll be front of the queue to hear about Donna's story and also find out what we really think in our next episode of The Crock Wrangler on Thursday.

The case of The Crock Wrangler is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News.

It's presented by me, Olivana Lothuris, Matt Garrick and Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson and this episode was produced on the land of the Larrakia and Wuruntree people.

Hi, I'm Sam Hawley, host of ABC News Daily.

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