Tony Dawson knew he wanted to fly from the age of four when an Australian Air Force jet plane flew over his South Invercargill home.

“I remember standing on a big wooden cable reel in the yard thinking, ‘I’m going to do that one day’.”

This Local Legend story is brought to you with the kind support of PR Law

And he did – fly that was, achieving impressive qualifications and recognition in New Zealand’s tightly regulated aviation industry. 

Tony, now retired from flying at 63, was a born teacher. He reached NZ’s highest ranking for a flight instructor (Category A) and became renowned for his commercial light aircraft and search and rescue pilot experience, navigating many a testing mission over the southern ocean’s most treacherous waters.

Sometimes there was no saying ‘no’. Pigs not only might fly, they must. He’s flown Sir Tim Shadbolt’s Auckland Island piglets to Auckland on some very hairy night-time flights, all in the name of medical research. “One night flying back over Dunedin in a violent thunderstorm my rattled co-pilot sought reassurance, asking if the outcome of our flight would be a happy one,” Tony recalls.

In his 20-plus-year aviation career there were quite a few such moments, including emergency landings in single and twin-engine aircraft, one headed towards a tumultuous Foveaux Strait. On another occasion he flew from Ardmore to Invercargill only to have his newly assembled Partenavia P68C, shipped from England, conk out on the runway on landing. “Small balls of PMC sealing compound had formed in flight blocking the filter screens in the fuel tanks. But thankfully, I’ve never broken, bent or damaged an aircraft, apart from flying through a flock of seagulls, on a night landing in Auckland,” he says.

However, to a humble Tony, who’s spent his life giving to others, it’s the hundreds of well-schooled young pilots he’s trained that are his most remarkable achievement, most now flying commercially, domestically and internationally. “That gives me so much satisfaction.”

Tony as a kid with his first brown trout out of the Mataura River. Photo: Supplied

You could say Tony was destined to fly. “As kids, we were falling out of the neighbourhood gum trees in South Invercargill and “flying” off the frame of the backyard swing breaking limbs. It was almost a badge of honour,” he grins.

He’d bike to the Oreti River fishing alone, aged seven, and by 11 or 12 was a Southland age group swimming champion. He also bred NZ champion bantam and heritage breed hens, showing at national level, thanks to elderly Mr McGinnis up the road who mentored him.

There was always an entrepreneurial streak and a firm determination, Tony having to support himself from his mid-teens. Besides the numerous after school jobs, he’d fit in some duck shooting on the way to school. “I’d ride my motorbike back from Tisbury to Kingswell High and hand in my shotgun and ducks at the office, do a quick change, then collect them after school.” However, despite a strong academic performance his eccentric ways soon had him “asked to leave” in 7th form, his parents also unimpressed.

Cows, kids and building a future - Tony, with daughter Laura, right, and baby Andrew, back during his farming days. Photo: Supplied

Tony worked and lived on farms, gleaning all he could, especially about dairy farming and sharemilking. “I was a sponge. I was determined to achieve and succeed.” By 30 he’d saved, and proved enough to the Rural Bank, to purchase a 64ha (160-acre) farm at Dacre and build a high performing herd. Now married to South School sweetheart Bronwyn, he bred pedigree Holstein Friesians, using the best global AI genetics and leading the way with embryo transplant technology, showing his cattle and becoming a junior judge.

A powerful spiritual encounter at 18 cemented a Christian faith that became a consistent thread throughout his life. Following that childhood passion to fly while farming at Dacre, he also became Rural Chaplain to the Mataura Valley in the early 1990s supporting the mass migration south of dairy farming families, initiating an Edendale Dairy Factory workplace ministry, and caring for freezing works’ families amid meat industry turmoil. “We nurtured and supported hundreds of North Island sharemilkers and new farm conversion owners arriving in Southland.”

Here he got his first taste of journalism along with Geoff Heaps, setting up ‘The Pioneer Press’ publication with the Southland Dairy Co-op, aimed at supporting these families.

Tony enjoying farm life. Photo: Supplied

Once off the farm he seized the opportunity to fly commercially dropping trampers and hunters to Stewart Island, then flying and instructing for Southland Aviation College, as Southern Wings was then known.

He was Senior Coastguard Pilot for 16 years, then president of Southland Coastguard Air Patrol, unfortunately seeing too many people die at sea, despite battling sometimes atrocious weather to search for and drop life rafts to them. “We could be operating as low as 250 feet (76m) above 9m waves in gale winds down near the Auckland Islands in unforgiving waters,” Tony says. “I recall searching for a missing Korean seaman and having my co-pilot complete a turn as the windscreen on my side was obscured by sea spray.”

The Stewart Island Cessna 402 crash was another significant mission, crews only managing to save some of those on board. 

However, as a pilot you try not to focus on the sad and traumatic times. There have been many victories but having witnessed too many tragedies and having weighed his aviation past and future in the balance, Tony rolled into Southern Wings’ hangar for the last time in 2015. That ended 20 years as an A Category Instructor, Flight Examiner and Chief Ground Instructor. It was time to pursue other passions.

A keen fisherman and freelance fishing writer, he was offered a role editing one of NZ’s most popular fishing magazines – an immensely satisfying five or so years. 

Tony, right, with Chatham Islands fisherman Richard Goomes and wife Elizabeth, delivering the message in a bottle back to him. Photo: Supplied

The story of the year came in 2018 when a Chatham Islands ambergris hunter phoned. Tony had written a message on the back of a beer carton while hunting with mates at Big Kuri Bay, Stewart Island, in 2001, put it in an empty port bottle and tossed it into the sea. “This guy found the bottle 17 years later on the Chathams, ironically on ‘Ocean Mail Beach’, and rang to say he’d found it.” The guy invited him to the Chathams where this time Tony attached approved research tags to some of the dozens of blue cod he caught while in pursuit of a world record size catch.

“Blow me down, I got a call several years later from a fisherman, who’d caught one of those,” he laughs. 

In 2011 Tony’s love of the sea and compassionate heart had him volunteering as first mate’s assistant on the Pacific Hope mission ship, sailing the Pacific Islands from Japan to Auckland, no autopilot on that mission.

The minister in me - Tony while christening little Kinley at Richmond Grove. Photo: Supplied

Asked to “fill in” at Richmond Grove Presbyterian Church when the minister moved on in 2003, Tony, a gifted public speaker, rekindled his passion for preaching and ministry. After studying theology and training, he was ordained as a minister, that ‘filling in’ role only ending recently after more than 19 years of service.

He’s also served as PSS Southland Trust Board deputy chair and PSS Retirement Villages chairman, so several years ago it was time to pursue his own long-held creative passions.

One of Tony's paintings. Photo: Supplied

Tony wrote his first children’s book then spent 18 months in Tauranga being mentored and developing his reactivated artistic gift, while also designing and maintaining bespoke gardens. He’s now happy painting in his studio in the old Invercargill Railway Station where his incredible works are already turning heads.

“I’ve had a great life. I’ve looked up from the absolute pits of despair and surveyed the world from the absolute pinnacles of achievement, but that’s life.”

This Local Legend story is brought to you with the kind support of PR Law