'A mustering accident hardly registering a beep'.... a statement born from frequency.
There has been a transition over many years of mustering operations where Aviator pilots pursued a career in mustering and learnt how to muster cattle, to stockman taking hold of their industry by becoming pilots and applying their cattle skills to the trade.Unfortunately allong the way the respect of the helicopter and the desire to be an aviator has been completely abandoned.
I remember a prominant member of the mustering fraturnity saying that he was very cautious when hiring pilots with a stockcamp background because from where he sat the majority of ringers he came in contact with had no respect for machinery and rairly kept the stockcamp vehicles in any sort of good working order. The few that made it into his organisation were surrounded by a lot of pilots from a non cattle background who were pilots first and musterers second, and the mentoring from within the organisation was always to train up very good pilots who could muster cattle. Management demanded a high skill level, good aviator attitudes, rigid check and training.
A quote from CASA not so long ago stated that the industry was almost void of mentoring and presented a major safety concern confronting the future of the industry.