Helicopter pilot PJ Knight is calling the shots from the air

Early in the morning when the world is just starting to stir is PJ Knight’s favourite time of the day. Flying solo in her helicopter, she has a bird’s eye view and a clear horizon for blue-sky thinking. “It’s just the best part of the day,” PJ says. “You think about your day and what you want to achieve. Nobody needs anything from you — it’s really peaceful.”

Those mornings offer a pocket of calm in an otherwise head-spinning routine. From her base in the Maranoa region of south-west Queensland, PJ juggles life as a single mother to two kids, Ruby, 10, and Charlie, eight, with running her aerial mustering business, Heli-One Services. “It’s just me and I do everything from taking the bookings and doing the bookkeeping to the actual mustering and everything in between,” she explains.

When Graziher calls, mustering season is in full swing and PJ is a woman in demand: “Can’t talk right now, mate,” she yells down the line over the thud of the chopper. “Usually I can multi-task but I really need to focus!” Later, she explains that when the season hits, her days are “flat chat”, starting well before dawn when she rises to pack school lunches, lay out uniforms for her kids and greet the nanny. She then heads straight out for a long day rounding up cattle from the sky.

It’s a challenging job and a difficult balancing act, she says, but it’s all worth it to run her own show. “A lot of pilots are away for weeks and months at a time; I’m so lucky my clients are close and I’m able to be home every night,” PJ explains, “but the challenges of having your own business and having kids… It’s not like most jobs, if you’re booked for that day then those people rely on you — they’ve got trucks and vets and contractors booked, so not turning up isn’t an option. My mum helps out so much, plus I’ve got wonderful neighbours and friends. It truly takes a village.”

PJ laughs as she recalls flying to the school to deliver a forgotten lunch one particularly hectic day. But she notes that becoming a parent has added an extra level of pressure to her already intense job. “It is a dangerous job,” she acknowledges. “I do worry, as every mother does: safety is always number one.”

PJ (an affectionate childhood nickname derived from her surname — think Knight, nightie, pyjamas, PJ. Her real name is Lynda) grew up “on a horse on the tail of a mob of cattle”, helping her parents Jeremy and Julie with their contract mustering business in Far North Queensland. Making the switch from the saddle to the sky was a no-brainer. “I always loved
helicopters and I just knew that was what I wanted to do,” she says. “I made up my mind and got my licence when I was 21.”

After mustering across the Northern Territory, the Kimberley and the Gulf of Carpentaria, PJ’s happy to put down roots on a 6070 hectare property, Gunadoo, near Injune, that is owned by her clients Grant and Kay Warrian. “It’s a beautiful place just half an hour out of town. And I caretake the property, so the kids and I love checking fences and water. The kids both have motorbikes and their own horses — they just love where we live.”

When she’s not flying, PJ is getting back in the saddle for campdrafting events. “I’m a mad-keen competitor,” she says. That fighting spirit is no doubt what helped her business take off, and while there are still plenty of challenges to juggle (not least the bitterly cold winters of the Maranoa), PJ is adamant she wouldn’t change a thing. “I love this life and everything it’s thrown at me.”

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