A newly qualified pilot is being hailed a hero in Australia for safely landing a small plane after fighting off an elderly passenger who tried to grab the controls and cut off the engine.

A 69-YEAR-OLD Australian man suspected of hacking his two grandchildren and wife to death with an axe and badly wounding his daughter was arrested yesterday.

SWIRLING clouds of fine, brown dust engulf the small truck as Chris Groves hauls the feed bin into a dry-as-a-bone paddock and 200 crying, pregnant ewes race to the grain spilling onto the parched earth.