Many of the scenes of Baz Luhrmann’s ambitious film Australia were shot around the million-acre El Questro Wilderness Park and it’s here that you’ll find a character who could have walked right out of Luhrmann’s epic – Dave “Chilli” Chilcot.
A crocodile tooth leers from the side of Chilli’s akubra hat. “It’s a $30,000 tooth,” he says, fondling the memento of the cunning croc that got away, minus an incisor. “I’ll sell it to you for five bucks.”
Dave "Chilli" Chilcott was a professional rodeo rider before taking the ranger’s job at El Questro Station
He’s joking, surely. Outback legends don’t give up their trophies lightly. Or do they? Perhaps it is enough to have done it all – bareback brumby riding, buffalo wrangling, barramundi wrestling, crocodile trapping for the lucrative zoo market – without having to keep souvenirs. After 40 years of Top End living, Chilcott hardly has the room on his hat to notch up all of his wild adventures.
Chilcott first fell for Australia’s northern reaches when he ventured onto Darwin’s rodeo track in 1969. After a decade on the competitive rodeo circuit, he indulged his love of untamed landscape, working variously as station hand and butcher in the Northern Territory, Queensland and the Kimberley. A stint as fishing guide at Bullo River Station led to a ranger’s job at El Questro Station in 2006.
“I ain’t leaving here,” laughs the 58 year old, whose wife of 38 years, Kath, is also in thrall to the east Kimberley. She’s the skipper on El Questro’s Chamberlain River cruise boat, and is also handy with cattle. In her spare time she collects seeds to make hand made jewellery. The pair have a property in northern New South Wales where they plan to breed horses should they ever retire.
The illustrious sounding moniker David Charles Chilcott the Fourth was never going to sit easily with the lifestyle of its bearer, who has been known as “Chilli” since childhood. He is the quintessential larrikin, quick with a joke and compulsively anti-earnest. So he can laugh at his own ignorance of the who’s who of Hollywood – even when it comes to his home turf.
When the cast and crew of ‘Australia’ the movie came to El Questro, Chilli took homestead guests for a glimpse of the action.
“I knew the bloke who was in charge of the horses, so I went to find him to say g’day,” he recalls. “I bowled up to the first bloke I saw and asked him where my mate was. He directed me to him. When I saw my friend I asked him ‘So, where’s all the big knobs?’. He told me that bloke I just asked for directions was one of the biggest.
“It was Hugh Jackman.”
Fast Facts
For further information on visiting the epic landscape of Australia the movie, visit the Western Australia Tourist Board Website.
You can either fly through Perth or fly direct to Broome or Kununurra from many Australian capital cities. Qantas operates direct flights on a seasonal basis to Broome from Melbourne and Sydney, while Virgin Blue operates direct flights to Broome from Adelaide and connecting flights from all other capital cities. Skywest and Airnorth fly from Perth to Broome and Kununurra and provide connections between Broome, Kununurra and Darwin in the Northern Territory.
For more information El Questro Wilderness Park click here.
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