When we began filming The Pilot's Funeral we didn't know Adrian Wagg or his family. We'd only just arrived up north when asked by the Yolngu, the people of northeast Arnhem Land, to film the traditional hollow-log burial ceremony they conducted in his honour. So extraordinary were the scenes we found ourselves recording, we knew we had the basis of a terrific documentary. But it was a long journey to the final film. And our first meeting with Adrian's widow Sally - our wonderful central character - was difficult.

In June 2002 when Adrian was tragically killed, Trevor Graham, Denise Haslem and I were in Yirrkala making another Film Australia documentary, Lonely Boy Richard. We had arrived only a few weeks before Adrian's helicopter went missing on 5 June. The alarm was raised when Adrian failed to make a scheduled refueling stop while conducting a routine survey for a proposed gas pipeline through Arnhem Land.

A massive aerial search was launched and, although newcomers, we felt first-hand the apprehension, then the shock experienced by the entire community when the burnt-out wreckage was discovered next day. Everything stopped as the community mourned.

The helicopter belonged to the Yolngu. It was the flagship of their airline, Laynhapuy Aviation. Adrian, their pilot, was deeply loved. It was his idea to start the helicopter service for the community 15 years earlier. But their shared history went further back to 1972 when he had first come to them as a young carpenter. Together they built the first tin and bush-timber houses when the Yolngu of Yirrkala Mission led the historic movement back to their ancestral homelands.

We knew none of this back then. But on the day the wreckage was found I realised I had met Adrian and had even flown with him. In 1987, I was working as a television reporter, based in Darwin filing for Channel Ten in Sydney. My first trip to Arnhem Land was to shoot a news story about Australia's first Aboriginal owned and operated helicopter. The pilot was Adrian Wagg and the helicopter was Laynhapuy Aviation's first aircraft.

A few days after Adrian's accident we met senior ceremonial leader Djambawa Marawili in Yirrkala. We were told he had come in from his homeland at Yilpara to stage a big funeral ceremony for "the pilot" (it is against Yolngu law to name the dead): a traditional hollow-log coffin burial not performed since the missionaries established Yirrkala in the 1930s. We sensed something significant was about to take place and wondered whether we'd be able to catch a glimpse.

That afternoon we were at the weekly football match at Yirrkala's community oval when we were approached by a messenger from Djambawa. "Come now with your camera. It's started," we were told.

Trevor left immediately and began filming the Yolngu men painting the sacred burial log (dhakandjali) in a thicket, enclosed by tarp, next to Adrian's house. We didn't know why or what for, but agreed to film without hesitation. Next day I joined Trevor to help record sound. As a woman I was not allowed to enter the men's only "shaded area" so when Trevor went in there to film I waited nearby. This was when we first met Adrian's widow, Sally. Her brother emerged from the Wagg family home and demanded to know what we were doing. Sally was with him and was obviously upset about our presence. Trevor and I were mortified. We believed Adrian's widow had been consulted and had agreed to the ceremony being filmed. It transpired that the Yolngu had thought someone had spoken to her, but they hadn't. Sally thought we were intruding on their grief and filming the ceremony for that night's news.

After careful explanations on our part Sally tentatively agreed to let us continue on the proviso that we also consulted her about any future use of the footage. Kindly she then invited me inside for a cuppa and introduced me to her family, relatives and friends from "down south" who'd converged on this remote corner of Arnhem Land. Outside, the funeral ceremony was in full swing. Inside, everyone was staggered by what the Yolngu were doing for Adrian.

We filmed as the Yolngu gathered around an oval-shaped "sand pit" called a yingapungapu, a sacred sand sculpture representing clan and country. Here with clapsticks and didgeridoo they performed the ritual funeral songs and dances that are part of Yolngu law.

Inside the shaded "men's (only) area", the painting of the hollow log or dhakandjali continued day and nightÑintricate patterns and motifs representing the land, sea and rocks of Adrian's adopted country. As they worked the men talked about Adrian and his life with them, and sang the farewell songs according to Yolngu custom.

Adrian was "adopted" by the Mangalili people from Djarrakpi, an outstation south of Yirrkala. When he first came to Yirrkala, he worked closely with the son of Narritjin Maymuru, a renowned Mangalili leader and artist, and was adopted, in the Yolngu way, as a "son" into the clan.

There was tremendous commitment and pride in what was unfolding. "Now we are bringing back the past," ceremonial leader Djambawa Marawili announced. "This is a big, big history. This is what we call reconciliation between Ngapaki [white people] and Yolngu...We have forged a new relationship with this ceremony."

The final day of the funeral ceremony was electrifying as the hollow log, containing Adrian's ashes and some of his clothing, was carried coffin-style out of the men's area into public view for the first time. Wedged among the Yolngu pallbearers were Adrian's sons, Daniel and Tim, struggling with their load, their grief and the intensity of the moment. Amid wailing, dancing and singing the burial pole was finally laid to rest, upright, in the backyard. It was highly dramatic and incredibly emotional.

When it was all over, Trevor, Denise and I went back to work on Lonely Boy Richard, the documentary we'd gone to Yirrkala to make. We also translated all the material shot during Adrian's funeral - not just words but meanings or intentions for music, song, dance and motifs. This took weeks. Not any Yolngu speaker would do for these more complex ceremony translations. Always the right person whose clan owned or belonged to that song, dance or painted image had to be found, often literally.

During this time I occasionally saw Sally in the nearby mining town of Nhulunbuy where we all did our shopping. I would smile and say hello. I remember once, not long after the crash, seeing her talking to a friend and wondered how she was managing. A year and a half later she told us she still expected Adrian to walk through the door; only then did I begin to understand the full extent of her loss and grief.

We finished the translation of the funeral footage and gave Sally a copy. Around this time I asked if I could interview her for a magazine story about Adrian's life and work in Arnhem Land. She agreed and before we left Yirrkala in January 2003, I also interviewed her eldest son Daniel Wagg, Jonetani Rika from the Laynhapuy Homelands Association and Dhunggala Munungurr from Garthalala homeland, who all appear in our film.

Back in Sydney, Trevor suggested I use the interviews and ceremony translations to write a treatment for a documentary instead. Sally and the Yolngu all supported the idea, which received backing from Film Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In December 2003, almost a year after we'd left, we returned to Arnhem Land for three weeks to film interviews and location sequences in and around Yirrkala.

We went to Garthalala outstation to film the remains of the first tin and bush-timber houses Adrian built with the Yolngu during the birth of the homelands movement 30 years before. We interviewed Sally in her house, just metres from where Adrian's funeral ceremony was staged and where his burial pole now stands. We filmed her on trips to the homelands in her role as an aged care worker for the Yolngu. And we captured the unique flying taxi service offered by Laynhapuy Aviation for the people of the homelands which Adrian founded and his oldest son Daniel now manages.

As well as this new material, we returned laden with Sally's family photographs and hours of Hi-8 footage Adrian had taken over the years at home and at work. These helped bring Adrian the man - pilot, father, beloved husband and grandfather - to life on screen as did archival footage supplied by Burrundi Pictures, Exposure Productions, Stephen Johnson and the Australian Children's Television Foundation (Yolngu Boy).

In addition, never-before-seen 16mm film footage of Adrian working with the Yolngu was unearthed from Film Australia's archive by Ian Dunlop, who directed the seminal Yirrkala Project with the Yolngu in the 1970s and 80s.

The Pilot's Funeral was edited at Film Australia's studios in Sydney. What presented as a reconciliation story on the page emerged in the cutting room into something purer: a love story between a man, his wife and a people.

Twenty months after Adrian's funeral, Sally came down to see the near-completed film. A few weeks later Denise and I returned to Yirrkala to show the Yolngu. We stayed with Sally in her house by the sea and she offered the use of her TV room for our screenings.

For three days and nights, scores of Yolngu streamed through her place to view the film. Watching it with them, only metres from where the ceremony actually took place, added to the intensity and poignancy of the screenings. The Yolngu were unanimous in their approval of the film. For us, this made the long road worth every moment. By chance we had filmed a remarkable event; one that spoke volumes for love, loyalty and respect between black and white Australia.

Rose Hesp
Writer/director

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