Big Sky

Lauren Allen's privileged existence grinds to a halt when the wealth she's always known dries up after the death of her beloved father. Left with a legacy of debt and the pain of his deception, she goes with her only option and sells off business and private assets, including the family home.

Jimbo dangles over the edge of a harbour bridge by his ex-girlfriend Stacey's brothers as she demands that he pay her back $5000 he owes. If he doesn't pay by this afternoon she'll drop him off the Harbour Bridge. When he calls her bluff her brothers let him go and he splashes into the water far below.

Chris and Lexie arrive at an outback airstrip to collect a farmer, James McCourt and his two young children who are heading into the wilderness on a camping trip. As they load the plane the children's grandfather arrives with a court order for their return.

There's trouble at Big Sky, as Lauren tries to improve the balance sheet, meantime fighting a rear-guard action to quell the rising dissent and anxiety from the troops.

When his best mate Shane is jilted, Scotty commits to cheering him up. He moves Shane into his flat and takes him for his first parachute jump. The boys are playing hard and Scotty thinks Shane is handling the break up well. On a second jump a horrified Scotty watches as the parachute fails to open and Shane plunges to his death.

Chris and Lauren head for a weekend at Sir Douglas Ogilvie's, a wealthy industrialist and friend of Lauren's considering investing in Big Sky. Jimbo is stuck minding his girlfriend's dog Baby, who he doesn't like. Baby runs riot at the base, hopping on a plane and ending up in Mudgee, before stowing away on a ute. Jimbo is in major trouble.

Chris is surprised when his ex-wife, Robbie, turns up on his doorstep, terrified; her date turned violent when she tried to break off their relationship. Chris moves into protective mode, and lets her back into the house.

Having been forced to spend the day with his father having been sent home from school, Chris's son Jack (Joshua Smith) is in a plane that crashes in the outback.

Chris and Robbie panic when their son Jack goes missing. They spend a few anxious hours searching before he turns up on Chris' doorstep, wanting to live with his dad now. Robbie's suspicions that Jack is unhappy about the new man in her life have been confirmed.

Jimbo dreams of a woman in a hot air balloon, and is astounded to meet her in real life. Smitten, Claire also quickly develops feelings for him and their whirlwind relationship takes off. Sharing a love of flying, Claire takes Jimbo for a balloon ride and reveals her wish to have a large family.

Scotty is having a bad day. First his girlfriend Jen tells him she's leaving him for another woman. Then the angry producer of a film he's flying props and rushes to accuses him of running cocaine to the cast and crew and threatening the whole shoot.

Lauren is about to secure a contract flying prized Yellow Fin tuna from the south coast to connect with international flights to Tokyo, when a practical joke grounds Chris's plane, putting the deal in jeopardy.

Love is in the air at Big Sky. Lexie and Lauren discover they have not only fallen for the same guy but that he is using them to carry out a robbery. The women set a trap for the traitor only to find themselves trapped.

Jimbo and Lexie take shots of a waterfront mansion. Next door, a politically sensitive meeting is taking place. Later, the Big Sky office, Lexie's and Jimbo's flats are all ransacked, and the photos stolen. Fortunately Lexie has made copies, and she and Jimbo study them to see what makes them so hot.

When Lauren insists Chris takes a wealthy woman for flying lessons he is less than impressed. But Gillian is friendly, timid and self deprecating. He's disappointed when she ends the lessons abruptly. Not long after she resurfaces, determined to pick up where she left off.

The death of a pilot that he trained with throws Jimbo. It is the second death in eighteen months and even Jimbo's teflon coating can't protect him any more. He has a dream about flying his mate to heaven, where his mate tells him he's next in line for "the mile low club".

Accompanying Lauren to an aviation do, Chris is attracted to Kate Vernon, the PR person for the venue. Kate and Chris enjoy a joy flight next day, during which he learns her husband died recently. Attraction builds to a kiss, and they arrange a date for that night.

It's Friday 13th and nobody is around, so Big Sky is closed for the day. It also happens to be Lauren's birthday. Unfortunately, she spends it tied to a chair with Chris while Peruvian gangsters hold guns on them.

Jimbo meets up with an old school friend, Mac, in the street, and is stunned to witness a robbery, Mac being the driver of the getaway car. Jimbo agonises over whether to dob his mate in or not, when Mac turns up at the base.

Carrying a load of money back to Sydney from a country race track, Chris receives an odd distress call from nearby. He diverts and lands. Suddenly lights blind him. Through them he sees the silhouettes of small creatures behind the brush. He passes out and awakes to discover the money has been stolen.

The day to day hassles of trying to run Big Sky with too little capital are taking their toll on Lauren. And when she has a brush with her old life, in the form of rich and handsome Angus Galloway and two of her girlfriends, she is left ruing what she has lost.

A fight between Chris and Lauren escalates to the point where Chris resigns at the same moment as Lauren sacks him. He is surprised to discover she has taken his action seriously and hired a new chief pilot, Jane.

Scotty and Lexie make an emergency landing in a remote area. Injured, they are taken in by a hippy community of women. They discover their presence in the seemingly idyllic society has upset the status quo.

Jimbo runs into an old girlfriend, Jodie, and is stunned to learn he is her young son Max's father. Jimbo is sceptical, given he's been told he is infertile. However, Jodie's insistence there was no-one else at the time, and Jimbo's desperate hope there is a chance he can have children, quickly leads him to accept Max as his.

An old man, Fred Morgan, dies on Jimbo's plane. Using clues garnered from a trunk Frank was to collect, Jimbo and Chris unravel Fred's story. This involved a bank robbery, a treasure buried for twenty years, the "Wall of Death" motorbike and various other circus tricks and characters and finally, the revelation that Fred was in fact Jimbo's grandfather.

Chris is hurt. Robbie has rejected his proposition that they go out to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Feeling left behind and forgotten by his ex-wife, Chris takes his feelings out on Scotty.

Lexie flies to a coal mining town. With their wives away shopping in the city, the miners have run amok. Three of them have lost a bet, to be paid off by flying naked to the beach. Meanwhile Jimbo and Scotty, each convinced they know more about women than the other, end up betting on who can score a date with Lauren first.

Jimbo is flying when one of his engines gives out, and then the other. He tries everything to get them going, to no avail. As he plunges to earth, prayer seems the only option. Suddenly, the engines kick back in. To Jimbo it's a miracle.

Chris wakes in a strange room on a farm, unsure of how he got there. A woman informs him that they are husband and wife. Chris struggles to regain his memory, despite the efforts of the two women living there to keep him in the dark.

On a routine run, Chris discovers major environmental damage to an area of wetlands. Locals attribute the problem to any number of causes, all legally sanctioned and permitted. Chris frustration grows when he meets a little girl who has a fatal illness as a result of the pollution.

Chris damages an eye playing with his kids, and tries to ignore the resulting obstructed vision. Knowing he's unfit to fly, Chris reschedules jobs until he is backed into a corner over accompanying Paula on a job, confessing his problem to Lauren the only other option.

After Chris is diagnosed with a detached retina, he enters surgery but rejects Lauren's attempts to comfort him. When Chris is given the all clear for his operation he initiates a romance between Lauren and himself. Meanwhile Scotty dates an older married woman.

Shay is happily planning an upcoming trip to Bali with her girlfriends... her first trip overseas. But plans are put aside when her father has a heart attack; and his drugged ramblings, mixed with inconsistencies with her birth certificate, make Shay realise that she's adopted.

Scotty lands to offer assistance at a car accident on a deserted road. He finds two men, one unconscious and cuffed, the other an undercover cop in a hurry. Scotty wants to fly the criminal to hospital but the cop to a fellow undercover cop who is in peril. Shay meets her biological mother for the first time. Jimbo gets involved with an actress while Chris and Lauren start fighting.

Jimbo is seduced and then double-crossed by a troubled woman. Lauren is convinced she is in love with Chris only to be disappointed.

A very distraught woman, Shelley, appeals to Shay to help her escape from what appears to be a case of domestic violence. Touched by her dilemma, Shay organises for her to go with Jimbo and Lexie. Shelley asks them to take her to her sisters house in Merimbula, a nearby coastal town. Shay decides to find her biological parents.

Paula and Lauren have a flutter at a country picnic race and win. The local bookie tries to refuse paying out the sizeable amount, until Lauren threatens to go to the police. The locals are clearly unhappy about out of town blow-ins cleaning them out. Jimbo is in charge while Chris and Lauren are away, Shay gives her mum a birthday present. Chris gets jealous over his ex-wife's new boyfriend.

Lauren is shocked to see a man that looks like her supposedly dead father getting into a limousine. She is further puzzled when the limo company tells her the car was hired by a Mr D Allen. Chris laughs it off as a strange coincidence, but is himself convinced when he gets a phone call from Duncan telling him he is alive and he's okay, but they're not to act on the information for 24 hours.

Scotty is given the unexpected job of transporting a dead body and is terrified when it starts making noises mid-air, unaware this is normal. Jimbo enjoys Scotty's discomfort, who is furious with landing such a lousy job.

Chris is shocked when man leaps to his death during a flight, Chris narrowly missing being able to save him. About his own age and stage in life, Chris is haunted by the man's similarity to himself, compounded by his discovery of a suicide note expressing similar mid-life regrets that Chris is feeling.