It’s a shocking and sorrowful morning today for the families and for ABC staff, with news of the loss of veteran journalist Paul Lockyer, cameraman John Bean, and pilot Gary Ticehurst in a helicopter crash in a remote part of South Australia last night.
As a long-time ABC audience, our household sends condolences, and our very best thoughts and wishes to everyone affected by the loss of three fine professionals and family members.
No Place For Sheep 
We’re totally gutted in our household. Paul & I crossed paths a number of times years ago. Have only admiration & respect for him as a warm caring human being & as a brilliant reporter with those very rare attributes…common sense & ethics. Any story he did was well worth making the time to watch.
My partner spent hours recently in John’s company up at Rawson, Vic, with the search parties looking for a missing girl (who, happily, was found safe). He was a great bloke, down-to-earth, and had a wicked sense of humour. And a genius when it came to filming & photography.
And Gary we never actually met but followed via radio scanner the rescues in 1998; since then his was always a welcome voice over the airwaves as he flew in and out of the area. In Gippsland he is, was, always will be, a true-blue hero.
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The three of them were artists, in my opinion. Together they recently produced such brilliant work – those images of Lake Eyre that apparently inspired John Olsen –
Such a loss for their families first of all, and then for everyone who knew them and their work.
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Never met any of them. Or perhaps I did meet Gary Ticehurst. I know so many helicopter pilots it is difficult to remember. Whenever the media are in town I loan my car to the pilots, but almost certainly have not loaned (the journos jump into a hire car & zoom off trying to scoop the rival channels, leaving all the pilots to spend a couple of days walking around)
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… (preview is my friend) … almost certainly have not loaned my car to Gary Ticehurst.
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