Watching the sun rise while sitting on her horse, 28-year-old Jess, a jillaroo, will spend the day riding across the dusty plains of the Australian outback. She’ll tend to cattle, mend fences or find herself resting in the shade of a gum tree.
Jess thinks she has the best job in the world. And the rest of the world is about to learn what it is.
We’ve just taken delivery of our seventh Boeing 787 Dreamliner – called Jillaroo.
When it rolls up to airport terminals across the world, many will wonder what Jillaroo means.
A jillaroo (or its male counterpart, jackaroo) is a young person working on a cattle station.
They help muster livestock to new pastures, mend machinery and do a variety of other jobs to keep the station – often thousands of square kilometres in size – ticking over. It’s a tough job with a rich culture. And it’s uniquely Australian. That’s how all our Dreamliner’s are named – from Waltzing Matilda to Skippy to Great Southern Land. Jillaroo is the latest from the long list of things that are uniquely Australian put forward by the community to make it onto our aircraft. We have one more Dreamliner due to arrive this year (to be named Great Barrier Reef), and then another six from 2019.
We’re really proud that Jillaroo will take to the skies and be recognised in London and New York and other destinations in between. We hope it’ll inspire travellers to find out a little more about this intrepid figure of the Australian outback.
Check out this amazing video of Jess and our Dreamliner.