In August, an Airbus H145 twin-engine air ambulance helicopter was officially launched for use in the South.
Imported from Germany, the machine featured the very latest technology; Helicopters Otago managing director and chief executive Graeme Gale, also founding pilot of the Otago rescue helicopter service, avowed there was no better in New Zealand.
Its arrival — along with a matching machine for Christchurch-based GCH Aviation — marked the end of a long period of uncertainty following the Government’s decision to tender out the service.
But because the lead-in was so long between ordering and delivery, Mr Gale bought it before his joint venture company with GCH Aviation was awarded the contract in late 2018.
With a price tag of $15million, he acknowledged there were "a couple of restless nights" involved, however it was also a reflection of that Kiwi can-do and our nation’s No8 wire mentality that was "in a few of us still".
And it has been that attitude that has underlied Helicopters Otago growing from humble beginnings with leased helicopters, to a fleet of 17 aircraft, operating from an impressively organised and ever-expanding base at Mosgiel.
While Mr Gale has always been the relatively high-profile frontman, he stressed it was no longer a solo effort, now employing between about 30 and 40 staff.
"I try every morning to go around and say gidday to everyone in the building ... it takes a while, there’s quite a few there ... the staff are the business, I’m not the business. Without the staff, you don’t have a business. This business, unfortunately, people see is about me — and it’s not about me."
He acknowledged the past several years had been extremely challenging. The Otago Rescue Helicopter Trust was contracted for emergency services for much of the lower South Island with Helicopters Otago as its provider but the Ministry of Health wanted to deal with contractors directly and sought one contract for the entire South Island.
It had been the most stressful time in his life and he never wanted to go through such a process again.
But, throughout it, he believed in the service his team provided and, while there were international players wanting to come into the market, they would "meet anyone and challenge them at whatever they bring".
It was to his relief when it was announced all existing helicopter bases in the South would continue operating under a new agreement, provided by new joint venture Helicopter Emergency Medical Services New Zealand Ltd (Hems), between Helicopters Otago and GCH Aviation in Christchurch.
Helicopters Otago supplied three machines from Dunedin and one from Queenstown to the service and the company had another three that could be called in if needed, registered as air ambulances when crewed.
That was a far cry from the early days when no proper service existed and Mr Gale would receive a call while out doing agricultural work and drop everything to retrieve a patient.
Dunedin was now the busiest place in New Zealand for air ambulances and people did not often understand the capability that was available.
"We’re really fortunate here we’ve got a business the size it is with the number of pilots, number of machines and a very good set-up with St John," he said.
That meant, when the likes of the aftermath of the Whakaari/White Island eruption occurred, Otago-based helicopters were sent to Nelson to cover the lower North Island and Nelson-Marlborough as machines all moved north.
It was unusual to have a rescue helicopter service and a commercial — mostly agricultural — business operating in tandem; aside from Garden City Helicopters in Christchurch, it was unique in the South Island.
In other regions throughout the country where there was a dedicated rescue helicopter and it was dispatched on a mission, there often was not another machine to replace it. "We never have to do that," Mr Gale said.
Mr Gale’s entrepreneurial spirit was evident from his younger days in the retail trade, whether it was using his mother-in-law’s pet rosella as a decoy in the bush to catch wild rosellas to sell in the family’s garden centre business — the bird escaped its cage but he managed to snare a wild one and she never knew the difference — or working into the early hours of the morning making wire lampshade frames to sell all over New Zealand.
He had left school to join the family sports shop and garden centre business in Mosgiel, shortly after turning 15 with no qualifications — "you can't pass an exam when you’re in the corridor, can you?" he quipped — around the same time his father died.
"I’d hardly passed an exam in my life. Some of that stuff at school was pretty mundane, pretty boring, it didn’t have a lot of excitement about it.
"It [learning to fly a helicopter] had a practical sense about it. Show me once, I’ll never forget it. I think if you believe in something strong enough, and you believe you can do something, you can do anything. There’s no limits."
Mr Gale woke one day and told his wife, Ros, he was going to sell one of the shops. He put the sports shop on the market that day and it was sold by 4.30pm. Within a week, he had a phone call asking if he was interested in doing some flying.
When he sat his commercial licence, it was never with the intention of doing commercial flying; he did not think there was an opportunity there, nor that money could be made out of what would require such a huge investment and possibly limited work.
He promised his wife he would go back to the garden centre and help her. He never did and they sold the business two years later, buying a local helicopter business on the Taieri with leased helicopters.
From there, the business progressed but there was "nothing clever ... nothing smart about it", rather it was about utilising the skills he had picked up over the years in retail — "probably not the ones I learned at school", he said wryly.
"It doesn’t matter what product you’re selling, whether pot plants, tennis racquets, ice creams or helicopter flights, the principles are all the same. It’s about supplying a service at a fair and reasonable price."
After a few years, Mr Gale forged an association with St John and intensive care at Dunedin Hospital and started transporting the occasional patient. There was no air ambulance service in the region.
He was doing commercial work, mostly agricultural, when he might get a ring from St John, so would return to the Taieri airfield, pick up a paramedic, fly to the patient and drop them off at the Kitchener St landing pad.
He quickly saw there was demand for such a service, although it was very small and it was not a sustainable model.
It was not long before Mr Gale approached businessman Ross Black — who went on to become chairman of the Otago Helicopter Rescue Trust for 22 years — with the view of getting a BK117 twin-engine helicopter, because of the room in the back for patient care. And that was where it all really started.
There were some milestones along the way; when a Bledisloe Cup test was held in Dunedin in 1993, he approached Speight’s having decided to put on flights from Dunedin Airport to Kitchener St.
He ended up flying rugby greats Simon Poidevin and Colin Meads into Carisbrook to deliver the ball for kick-off.
There were more than 40,000 people in the crowd and Mr Gale had committed to the job, despite not having received approval from the Civil Aviation Authority. That approval was waiting on the fax machine after he had done the job — "which was kind of nice".
That cemented the association with Speight’s which became "quite a household name" attached with providing the rescue helicopter service.
There were plenty of heart-warming moments, whether it was flying boxes of beer out to saddle-weary riders on the Otago Goldfields Cavalcade, or flying such Otago rugby greats as Arran Pene, Jeff Wilson and Jamie Joseph into small country schools like Lee Stream, much to the delight of the children.
"There were some fun things that people got behind, before you had to have a whole lot of road cones and high-viz vests, when you could actually go and be creative," he said.
Back in 2005, Mr Gale was looking at the number of helicopter accidents, particularly at night, and there was a spate in Australia and the United States.
Unless there was a full moon with good visibility, flying with little illumination was extremely dangerous. Reflecting on his own experiences flying at night in a single-engined Jet Ranger, it was "pretty extreme".
And unlike the flatness of Australia, New Zealand — and the South Island in particular — had some very challenging terrain and topography, coupled with challenging weather patterns.
Mr Gale attended a conference in Australia where there was a session on night flying which included a presentation from a company on night-vision goggles.
By the end of the conference, he had talked the speaker into letting him take a set of goggles home, despite them being strictly controlled by the US State Department.
He remember getting off the plane in Dunedin and into his car, turning all the lights off and the goggles on and driving home. His verdict? "Pretty bloody good".
The introduction of NVG had been "just a fantastic leap forward", transforming patient care by being able to reach them safely.
It increased the amount of flying done at night from about 5%-10% to more than 50%, while "millions" of dollars had also been invested to upgrade aircraft for Performance-Based Navigation, again another milestone.
As well as recognising the service’s sponsors, Mr Gale said the support for the service from rural communities — places like the Maniototo, Lawrence, Waitahuna, West Otago, Clinton and Roxburgh — had been "just outstanding", with the likes of local Rotary and Lions clubs raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Asked whether there was still fun in the business, Mr Gale admitted the past couple of years had not been fun.
It was very challenging when "some of that stuff you believe 100% in ends up going outside your control".
"Some of that was very challenging when we live it, eat it, breathe it, see it daily. I guess we’re so connected to the community, when it comes to a tender, it just feels there’s a big disconnect between the tender and the patient.
"We tend to get caught up in the emotion [but] for Christ’s sake, that’s the bottom line of it. Without a patient, there’s no need for a service."
A few weeks ago, while there was a patient transfer from Alexandra at night, a bad car accident happened near Waihola which resulted in a young person having suspected spinal injuries.
They needed to go to Christchurch but the weather was not suitable for flying. A fixed-wing aircraft was suggested as being dispatched but there was going to be a time delay in it reaching Dunedin.
Mr Gale kept getting regular weather updates and, by about midnight, the cloud had broken. He checked whether it would make a difference to the outcome if he got the patient to Christchurch quicker than waiting several hours for the fixed-wing, and was told that it would. So he flew the young person to Christchurch and they were now walking. "There’s a lot of good stories like that," he said.
Like her husband, Mrs Gale, who works in the office, was devoted to the business — often watching the flight tracking on the phone at night until all crews were home safe. While she would like more time off, it was very hard for her to let go, he said.
The couple have three sons — David and Kevin are pilots working in the family business and Brian is in Perth with his building industry business.
Grandchildren could be found at Helicopters Otago’s base after school, cleaning vehicles, helicopters and floors while one grand-daughter was paid $5 a time to iron her grandfather’s shirts. "Grandkids are good. I do stuff with grandkids I wasn’t allowed to do with my own kids ... stuff that makes Nana’s lips curl," he said.
Asked whether retirement was on the agenda, having turned 65, Mr Gale quipped he had "too many people to p*** off yet".
While he was still there, enjoyed it, and knew how to make it happen when a call came in — doing it in a "heartbeat" — then he would continue.
There was a price to pay for that; on a busy night, there might only be a couple of hours sleep but that was "just the way it is".
