"There was a north-easterly storm with winds of 50 to 60 knots. I had to fly just above the waves. I knew there was a chance I might not survive," said Nicholas Murray-Leslie, a retired 747 captain and now Whitianga organic farmer.
"I had been told by the woman's doctor that if she didn't get to hospital soon she would die. She was pregnant and haemorrhaging."
At the time, Nicholas was Tauranga Aero Club manager and chief instructor.
It took five attempts for the then 23-year-old to land the Piper Tri-Pacer trainer on the island. "I kept getting blown off course and at one point ended up at Maketu."
Nicholas flew the woman to the Tauriko airstrip. The mother and baby survived and three weeks later, in much more settled weather conditions, Nicholas flew them home to Motiti.
Two months later, Nicholas received a visit from kaumatua. "They were wearing brown clocks and said they had come to thank me for saying the lives of their people. They asked if they could give me anything and I said, 'no it was my duty'.
"They then said I was now one of their people and they would take me to their home in the Urewera forest where, if ever I needed a place of protection for myself or my family, I could go to stay."
As they knew Nicholas loved hunting, the family took him to remote huts in the bush where he stayed for two days.
"It was magical."
Such events couldn't have been further from Nicholas' mind when he stepped ashore in Wellington as a 20-year-old with a borrowed 1 note in his pocket and plans to become a farmer.
It was to take 40 years to realise that ambition. The young Scot was diverted by opportunities in the 1950s which led him to the role of a Boeing 747 captain for
Qantas.
Now in his 70s, Nicholas and his wife, Monique, own and operate an organic sheep, beef and tea tree oil farm at Whitianga which produces and markets tea tree oil products under the company name of New Zealand Coromandel Mountains Tea Tree Oil Co.
At 14, Nicholas had won a three-year scholarship to an agricultural college near Chablis in the Yonne, France. Back in England, he worked as the office boy for Sabena Belgian Airlines but his request to be trained as a pilot wasn't taken seriously.
In 1953, Nicholas joined the British Army for two years' national service.
A career in the Army wasn't for him so, at 20, he emigrated to New Zealand. He was so cash strapped he slept under a bridge at the Glasgow Docks with a packet of crisps for dinner the night before he sailed on the Captain Cook to New Zealand.
"I had to borrow a pound from a fellow Scot called Neil Fraser to get off the ship when we got to New Zealand."
His first job was milking cows at Hawera and he then became a herd tester in the Patea, Waverley, Waitotara and Maxwell areas. At the end of his contract, Nicholas took a job driving bulldozers in the Huntly coal mines, earning good money.
"I was able to pay for flight training at Rukuhia Airport where Waikato Aero Club instructor Ken Fenwick supervised my flight training to commercial and C category instructor's licence."
The mines closed down and he found a job cleaning cement mixers with a four-pound hammer. "Two weeks later, Jonny Hessett one of the Waikato Aero Club instructors, told me there was a temporary six-week instructor's job going at the Tauranga Aero Club."
Tauranga club president Ron Norwood and vice-president Wally Bell gave Nicholas the job. Then, after six weeks, the instructor's and manager's job was awarded to Nicholas on the condition he gained his B category licence in one year. He achieved that in six months.
"When I started, we had eight students and that increased to 40 and we went from two aircraft to four. Teaching is the greatest way to learn about flying and I clocked up 1000 hours."
Nicholas was asked by Bill Faulkner, who owned and exported pine trees from Matakana Island, to help design an airstrip for the island. "The strip was some 600m long and we planted blue lupin to help stabilise the sand. I made the first landing once the strip was complete."
Nicholas was to carry out another rescue mission, this time to Matakana after a worker at Bunns Mill had a serious accident with a chainsaw. "I flew out in a Tiger Moth (DH 82 BEF) and the wind was so strong when I landed, mill workers had to hold the wings and tail down." With the injured man and another passenger, Nicholas took off, flying as low as he dared to avoid being blown out to sea by the 60-knot winds.
It was the club's engineer, Jim McDonald, who encouraged Nicholas to apply for a co-pilot's position with the national airline NAC. "I didn't think they'd take me but I went to Wellington for the interview and all they asked was if I'd had a crash to which I said no," said Nicholas.
What he didn't know was Jim McDonald and NAC chief pilot Captain George Harvey flew bombers together in World War II. "In effect because Jim said I was good pilot, I already had the job."
At the age of 25, Nicholas had his first command as captain of the Bay of Plenty Airways Aero-Commander passenger plane which, within month of his leaving, crashed into the eastern side of Mount Ruapehu on November 21, 1961. The pilot and five passengers died. An inquiry found while weather conditions were a factor, there were also structural problems with the aircraft.
By that time, Nicholas was in Sydney, flying for Qantas, going on to achieve the rank of captain at the age of 34 and piloting Boeing 747 aircraft.
Just six years after leaving Scotland, Nicholas returned home as a pilot and, over the next 21 years, flew all round the world.
In April 1975, he was among Qantas pilots who volunteered to fly rescue missions to Saigon to bring out troops from the South Vietnamese capital, about to be over-run by the Viet Cong.
"We picked up Anzacs and were some tons overloaded when we came under Viet Cong fire. On lift-off, the stall warning sounded and the control stick was shaking in my hands, warning of imminent stall and a crash.
"I flew through Red Zone 2 under Viet Cong fire a few feet above the rice paddy fields and could not raise the undercarriage as the opening of the wheel doors would have lost us some four to five knots and we would have stalled and crashed.
"I flew down the Mekong Valley and, after some 15 minutes at maximum power, we burnt enough fuel off to be able to lift the wheels and, eight hours later, touched down in Sydney with our troops."
When Qantas found it had too many pilots it encouraged some to seek other employment which is how Nicholas came to fly for Singapore Airlines, living in the vibrant Asian city for a year. "I studied Chinese medicine and acupuncture while I was there."
However, Nicholas had never lost the love for his adopted homeland. On flights back to New Zealand, he followed a path over the Coromandel Peninsula. "I used to look down on Mercury Bay and think I'd like to own a farm there."
Twenty-eight years ago, at 60, Nicholas and Monique bought 162ha of manuka-covered, cricket-infested land behind Whitianga.
"No one wanted this property. It was running sheep and the crickets were so bad they had opened up cracks in the ground."
Monique and Nicholas could see its potential. Instead of cutting down the manuka and kanuka to clear the land for more pasture, they began harvesting the leaves and devising a distillation process to extract their oil. They worked closely with Dick Merz (formerly of the DSIR) who, with Waikato University, carried out research which found antiseptic, antibiotic, antifungal and anaesthetic properties in the oil they produced.
Their company became the first to gain Bio-Gro certification for its tea tree oil and sundried teas.
Today, the farm produces a range of products, including pure oil, tea-tree soaps and manuka honey made from the nectar of the farm's flowers.
"We have recently begun marketing a by-product of the dilatation process called Hydro-Sol which is an effective, natural protection against fly strike, especially that caused by the Australia green fly," said Nicholas.
He may have at last achieved his initial ambition to be a farmer but Nicholas hasn't given up on flying.
He's a member of the Mercury Bay Aero Club at Whitianga, flying as often as he can.
He and Monique have, since 2005, given five flying scholarships to assist budding pilots gain their wings.
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