Retired farmer Harvie Beetham and son Charlie have spent much of their lives "out in the sticks" and know the value of the helicopter rescue services which have developed throughout New Zealand over the past 20 years.
They've both been users - 73-year-old Beetham snr twice as a patient, once as a skier injured on Mt Ruapehu and once after a vehicle accident on his Weber farm - and his son as a pilot with the Lowe Corporation Hawke's Bay Helicopter Rescue Service, based in Hastings.
But, clearly an adventurous type able to laugh at his own misfortunes over the years, Harvie Beetham has known the value of flying in outback rescue since he was a young man.
He's also a pilot with 45 years on the clock and once flew himself with a broken leg back from Fiordland, with one passenger co-piloting by hand-use of the pedals. "That was bit of a hairy trip," he recalls.
On another occasion he had to fly himself to hospital after almost chopping his leg off with a chainsaw on a property he then farmed near Pongaroa.
That he survived to tell the stories, he says, is thanks to the helicopter rescue services.
The most perilous of his adventures was a mid-winter mishap on the farm, when his four-wheeler tipped over.
It was about 1.10pm and his wife, Christine, was at work.
Suffering 10 broken ribs, he knew he'd have to wait for help, but it was well after dark when a neighbour found him after a search was launched. It was after 9.30pm that a rescue helicopter arrived from Palmerston North, and, with hypothermia setting in and having almost "given up the fight", he was flown, unconscious, back over the ranges, where he regained consciousness in a sea of white-coated people.
The pilot was Square Trust rescue service pilot Chris Moody. They'd seen each other before, when Beetham was lifted off Mt Ruapehu with the femur fractures that kept him in hospital for about 10 days.
Out of the hazy memories of the farm accident episode - "which was very close" - he recalls Moody lamenting: "It's a very expensive way of clocking up airpoints."
Beetham snr spent a lot of time rescuing people in remote areas during 28 years as a rural volunteer fireman, and says before helicopter services were introduced, many injured or seriously ill people had died before help was able to arrive.
"The helicopters are a marvel," he says.
It costs about $2.2 million to run the service in Hawke's Bay, with half needed from sponsors and public donations, says trust marketing and fundraising manager Louise Harvey.