Kiwi mum to fly PNG community support run
It took the death of Glenys Watson’s father to remind her just how short life was and prompted her and her husband to do something extreme to help others.
Five years on, the Hamilton mother of four is moving her family to Papua New Guinea to fly into some of the remotest areas in the world under the toughest of circumstances to deliver goods and services to small communities.
Watson, 36, her husband, Jonny, and their four daughters will move to Goroka in September where she will take up a role with Christian organisation Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) to fly light aircraft in support of local communities.
She will be flying in extreme weather conditions and often be landing on handbuilt airstrips, sometimes perched on the sides of mountains or near rivers.
“It is challenging in that you are taking off on short airstrips and having to deal with different weather phenomenons and mountains,” Watson said.
Watson qualified as a commercial pilot in Hawke’s Bay in 2001 and spent five years working for Air Hawke’s Bay as a commercial pilot, flight instructor and air ambulance pilot before moving to Hamilton and taking up a role with CTC Aviation.
For the past nine years she has been a stay-at-home mum raising her four daughters and has maintained her pilot’s licence by doing recreational flying.
“It wasn’t until about five years ago when my dad [Jim] passed away that we kind of re-evaluated our lives and what we could be doing because life is pretty short.
“I first heard about MAF when I was first training and I was captivated by the type of work that they did — reaching some of the remotest places on earth and people on earth and making a difference in their lives.
“So we got back in contact with MAF and I guess there is a God aspect in there — we felt this is where God wanted us to go and to invest some of our skills and talents and gifts into other people.”
They started the application process in May last year when their youngest daughter, Lucy was 1. After passing an intense selection process involving flying, aptitude, medical and psychological tests and assessments, a post was confirmed early this year.
Watson heads to Queensland in August for a month-long flying and standardisation training to prepare her for some of the toughest flying conditions in the world before being reunited with her family in Cairns for a week-long family orientation.
When they land in Papua New Guinea in mid-September she will have more in-field training in Mount Hagen, where MAF’s Papua New Guinea headquarters are, and the entire family will spend between two and three months learning about the culture and how to speak the local language Tok Pisin.
The Watsons will eventually settle in Goroka, the capital of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea which is 1600m above sea level and has a population of about 20,000.
They will move into a westernstyle house in a compound with five other expat families.