It has been 40 years since David Gapes, left, and Denis O'Callahan were pirates of the high seas. Picture / Dean Purcell

It has been 40 years since David Gapes, left, and Denis O'Callahan were pirates of the high seas. Picture / Dean Purcell

Two men are yarning about the old days, now and then dissolving into laughter. One wears his reading glasses low on his nose. This is "Mr Hauraki", but he doesn't like being called that.

"It was a hell of a lot more than one person, that's for sure," says David Gapes, still lean but with less hair.

It was the 1960s and these men are now in their 60s.

"Jeez, it wasn't even the both of us, it was a lot of people who put their heart and soul into it. Most of them haven't got much recognition for it, but that's the truth of it."

Gapes and Denis "Doc" O'Callahan, sitting beside him, are original Radio Hauraki pirates. The men and the other two original directors, Derek Lowe and Chris Parkinson, and a team of rebellious youngsters, waged war against the stuffiness of state-controlled radio in the '60s. They set to sea in a boat and changed the airwaves forever.

If you push them, these two will admit to more than a little astonishment at what they achieved. From state-controlled radio with a few stations, now there are commercial networks and small stations broadcasting out of suburbs.

Generations of New Zealanders were introduced to some of the best music because of the pirates - the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin; it's a long list. New Zealanders are still growing up to the music as Hauraki remains strong.

Tune in any time and catch a Metallica track or Alice Cooper singing Poison, or the Doors, or Pink Floyd, or some Bowie, or maybe the Exponents. Radio Hauraki, as the slogan goes, is still "classic rock that rocks".

The station is turning 40 this year. On December 4, officially.

On that day in 1966 the first transmission went out from the Tiri in the Colville Channel, between Great Barrier Island and the Coromandel Peninsula, in a little pocket of international water.

The party is already underway. It is October after all, known at Radio Hauraki as Rocktober. Hello Sailor, Th'Dudes and Hammond Gamble are already on the road for a series of concerts in the pirates' honour.

Gapes and O'Callahan are thinking back to how it all began. Yep, Gapes remembers the moment; he's just not sure which pub it was. Just loose conversation in a pub in Wellington. Maybe the public bar of the St George, he thinks. No, the Britannia. Anyway, the one next to where the Evening Post used to be.

Gapes was a journalist back then. He is again now. It's print media which flows through his veins, not radio, he says.