It was a long and lonely haul between the West Coast and Nelson and, nearing Kawatiri Junction, Arthur Hughes left the shelter of his cab because the god-awful wind kept blowing the tarpaulin off, the cold rain and freezing sleet threatening to soak the cargo of sugar.

As he was securing his load, the headlights of his truck cut through the darkness and rain, illuminating a figure staggering towards him like a drunk. Who on Earth would be out here at this time of night? In this weather?

Though unsteady on his feet, the man wasn’t drunk. His clothes were in bloody tatters; wet, dirty and full of twigs and ferns, as though he had just crawled through the bush. He raised his hand, clearly trying to get attention, and as Hughes approached, the man pointed upwards, towards the bush-covered mountains now swallowed by the clouds and rain. Hughes caught stuttered and barely coherent words: “Aeroplane...Bert Mercer...crash...others...” The man breathed with difficulty, clutching his chest. Several of his ribs were broken.

Hughes extracted what information he could.

It transpired that flying under the weather—between the storm clouds and the mountains—a DH84 Dragon with six passengers on board was caught in fierce turbulence as it crossed over a spur. It had stalled, tumbled into a spinning nose dive and, with little altitude to recover, clipped a tree and ploughed into the forest canopy, breaking up on impact and casting its occupants down the mountainside.

The man’s name was Bruce Perry, and together with the pilot, Colin Lewis, he had set out down the mountain several hours earlier to get help. At one point, suffering from a concussion and a foot injury, Lewis could no longer go on. The other passengers, including Bert Mercer, were not in any shape to get off the mountain on their own.

Hughes tucked the survivor into the passenger seat of his cab and sped towards Murchison to muster a rescue. He found assistance short of there, at the Gowan Bridge store, where there was a telephone and the storekeepers, the Diserens family, took care of Perry. The police, it turned out, had already been alerted because the Air Travel (NZ) company’s DH84 Dragon, registration ZK-AHT, was reported missing from its scheduled Nelson-Westport-Hokitika route at 3.45 pm that day.

A rescue team was mobilised—including police, local doctors and some 20 lads from the Young Farmers Club in Murchison who happened to have their social gathering that evening. By midnight, they reached the scene of the crash and began combing the steep mountainside for survivors.

It was June 30, 1944, and the news that a plane was down and that, among others, Bert Mercer was missing swept along the length of the West Coast, wherever the waves of the Aeradio could reach.

Everyone on the Coast knew Mercer, either directly or by his reputation for courage and kindness. His name was spoken with reverence in South Westland, his exploits told and retold until they had become the fabric of the folklore.

When someone fell ill in a remote homestead, scalded themselves with boiling fat or put an axe through their foot and the weather had closed in, quelling all hopes of medical help arriving promptly, it was Mercer who came to the rescue, descending from the heavens like an angel of mercy.

He would fight the wind as it buffeted his flimsy machine of wood and fabric, bringing her down to land on the beach or in a paddock. He would load the sick or injured into the belly of the orange Fox Moth and whisk them off to care at the Hokitika hospital, often forced to fly low between the roaring sea and a slab of approaching storm cloud.

Just knowing he would come, that barring a calamity he was only a radio message away, was reassuring, easing the burden of isolation felt so acutely on the remote West Coast. By plane, the hospital was only an hour away. On foot or horseback, the only alternatives, the journey could take a week or two.

But Mercer had become more to the Coasters than their air-ambulance man. He had brought the world to them in his small plane. There was now regular mail, fresh “town” bread, newspapers and spare parts for machinery. Anything ordered via the radio or telephone and small enough to fit into the aeroplane could be delivered within days, not weeks or months as before. Sometimes, ever the gentleman dropping in for a flying visit, Mercer would just bring a bunch of wildflowers he picked up somewhere up the valley. The quiet workaholic had an impeccable safety record—save the encounters with cattle, fences and soft sand to be expected flying on the West Coast. He had flown more than 11,000 hours—more than any other pilot in the country at the time—a feat in itself given the wilderness and the weather he flew in.

But now Mercer himself was missing. Collectively, the Coast held its breath for the news from the rescue at Kawatiri Junction.