‘Jillaroo Jess’ stars in 4WD video series

A Pilbara station hand, truck driver and social media celebrity has taken her next step to stardom after featuring in a television series with a national automotive company.

Jess Edwards, aka Jillaroo Jess, spent last week filming at a Pilbara station and Karratha’s Hunter Mechanical garage with the two celebrity faces of Melbourne-based company Terrain Tamer — 83-year-old four-wheel-drive industry veteran Allan Gray and his nephew, Andrew Gray.

The company, which has for years filmed short series on aspects of 4WD repair to complement their automotive services, flew a six-person crew from Melbourne to Karratha to film with Ms Edwards for the new program.

The series will be shown on national television and posted on the Terrain Tamer website in about four months.

Ms Edwards said the company contacted her after seeing her tongue-in-cheek truck safety video that went viral last year after being posted to her Jillaroo Jess Facebook page.

She said a back-story had been developed for this series, which focused on making sure her ute was robust enough to survive the long trips she made through the Pilbara terrain for work.

“The story goes that, because I do a lot of long-distance travel, Allan and Andrew are helping me fix it up,” she said. “The vehicle is standard, so there’s nothing wrong with it, but they’re helping me put a few different things in to make it more efficient and robust, safer, and more reliable on the road.”

Allan Gray said Ms Edwards was the “ideal” person to take centre stage in the latest series.

“We’ve done a lot of DVDs, and this is just a continuation of that, but we’ve never really done this in such a big way,” he said.

“We’re spending a lot of time and effort on this vehicle because this young lady’s a character in her own right and a lively sort of free spirit, which is what we’re after.”

For more information or to see the series once released, go to terraintamer.com/en.