Exclusive! Richie McCaw interview

Will Kelleher (0:15)

So welcome everybody down to Christchurch, and we're sitting here with a pretty special guest for The Ruck today. You probably have all heard of him. Welcome Sir Richie McCaw.

Richie McCaw (0:25)

Thank you, thank you.

Will Kelleher (0:26)

Do we call you sir?

Richie McCaw (0:27)

No, no, no, no, no, none of that sort of carry on, so yeah, welcome to Witton Cold Christchurch.

Will Kelleher (0:34)

Yeah, so can you describe for us Richie, where we are? Because we're in your kind of home from home, let's say.

Richie McCaw (0:40)

Yeah, so obviously Christchurch is my hometown, and we're out at the airport where, well, since I finished playing, when I finished playing, I got into commercial helicopter flying, and I was part of this business that we're at, Christchurch Helicopters, which is on the backside of the airport. And so we're out here hoping to go flying today, as the weather comes right, but yeah, I spent a lot of time out here when I finished.

Will Kelleher (1:01)

Yeah, we'll bring the listeners in to the tour slightly. So we're into day two of trying to get up in the helicopter with you.

I arrived on Tuesday and it was incredibly windy, and we were postponed, didn't we?

Richie McCaw (1:11)

Yeah, it was probably got flyable in the afternoon yesterday, but it wouldn't have been very pleasant. So I'm hoping for a better day today, but I guess the joys of South Island, New Zealand in the middle of winter.

Will Kelleher (1:22)

Yeah. So take us in to your work here. How much do you come down here? Do you still, is this your kind of day job or is it more of a hobby these days?

Richie McCaw (1:30)

When I finished in 2016 or end of 2015, I was pretty much full time here flying up until 2019 when the pandemic put a spanner in a lot of things.

So since then, I've been pretty much part time here as needed. You need to do enough to keep safe and keep your hand in and keep up to speed. But I've got a few other things that are keeping me busy as well. So it's probably much more of a part time thing, but still love the opportunity to go flying and the helicopter stuff that we did as a business, you get a good variety. So yeah, pretty lucky to be able to do that.

Will Kelleher (2:06)

So tell us about, because people would have read that you've been doing this for a while now. So take us into some of the kind of missions I suppose that you've done.

There was the Christchurch fire 2017, a few milk runs. Can you explain up in Kaikoura when there was an earthquake up there?

Richie McCaw (2:20)

So when I finished in 2015, so 2016, I'd done my private licence, but I spent about the first six months, I wasn't here all the time, but I was working towards getting my commercial finished. So I got that done.

And just because you got a licence in the helicopter doesn't mean you just charge off and do anything. So that was sort of middle of the year. I think it was November, the Kaikoura earthquake came about, which, so I just sort of started to get going.

And we were the first sort of to get up to Kaikoura that first morning. And by chances, I was just going to be going as a passenger because the boss here and one of the others were taking a bunch of urban search and rescue people up because there had been a house collapse and we had two six-seaters to go. And I could go with full seats. But then one of the engines didn't start on the helicopters. But then, so the smaller one had to go. And due to something around a medical or whatever, I was going to be the second pilot.

So I ended up flying one of the helicopters straight in there. And I was kind of grinning from ear to ear, getting a chance to do something for real in terms of, we had the earthquake in 2011 where we were trying to help out and do things, but it was very much just on the periphery of not actually helping, whereas this is a chance to go and help. So I flew up there and we ended up, for three or four weeks, did a heap of flying backwards and forwards, because all the roads were shut. So we were, after the initial couple of days, of just trying to sort out where it was at, just to get people in and out, suppliers in and out. We did a lot of that. And I guess from a selfish point of view, kind of got me going. And got a good number of hours out. There wasn't tricky flying. And it sort of got me going, which I was pretty thankful for.