Hickey volunteers to give back to the community
Mathew Hickey talks to Helen Harvey about guarding the coast.
Late one night Coastguard volunteer Mathew Hickey got a call there was a black object in the water near the Waiwhakaiho river mouth.
The weather was terrible. They ended up off the Waiwhakaiho reef in the early hours of the morning searching for a possible person in the water. Conditions-wise, it was one of the rougher call outs he has been involved with, he says.
‘‘It turned put to be a false alarm. We prefer being called out to a possible something than not getting turned out...it’s easier being turned out and being stood down than it is the other way around.’’
They were called out in last August when 18-year-old boatie Matt Smith went missing.
‘‘The sea conditions and the weather were terrible. Our boat was out for maintenance so we ended up going out on a private boat to do the initial search and then we teamed up with Port Taranaki and supplied a crew to help on their boat.’’
They weren’t able to find Smith, which was disappointing, he says. The crew had a debrief and could have asked for counselling had they needed it.
Hickey began volunteering for the Coastguard in 2012, because he wanted to give something back to the community and is now operational crew and unit safety officer. He is training for his skipper’s certificate.
He has built on his basic understanding of boating, he says, and has learnt a lot about safer boating since he’s been with the Coastguard.
And he tries to pass that knowledge on to boaties who he sees not wearing a lifejacket.
‘‘We try to chat to as many as we can and try to give them a prompt reminder. We get a mixed reaction. Some of them are quite happy, some are like you are an inconvenience to them, trying to get them to put a lifejacket on. It’s quite basic, but we push it quite heavily. Those slim ones, you don’t even notice you’re wearing them.’’
Sunday mornings they do training and also try and do some PR work at the same time, Hickey says.
‘‘We talk to local boaties if we see them out on the water. Most recently we went up to the Urenui fishing contest and had a talk to some guys on the ramp.’’
Hickey reckons he averages about five or six hours a week, but it varies. In 2016 he volunteered for 415 hours.
‘‘It was a large amount of hours put in over the year and also taking on the project that I did and getting through it.’’
He worked through changing the Taranaki Coastguard from the Safe Ship Management System to the new Maritime Operators Safety System to move in line with new maritime rules for all commercial vessels, he says.
‘‘It took a lot of evenings and ready through manuals and talking with our operations manager in Whanganui and also with the team here, trying to redo the processes and come up with process that suited us. Our crew put in their own personal time to make it specific to what we do.’’
Hickey is happy to spend the hours because he likes helping people and the sense of relief he gets when they find someone who is lost, or needs a tow.
But he admits he spends so much time there his fiancee calls the Coastguard his second marriage.
All Coastguard crew in Taranaki are volunteers, have day jobs, and are on call 24/7.
‘‘We work on a semi-formal roster and have weeks on and weeks off, but if we can all make call outs and training, we do. Like every rescue service you don’t want to be busy, it means someone else’s day is going bad.’’
When the pager goes he ‘‘talks nicely to his boss’’ and responds to the call, he says.
In 2016 Hickey received the Central Region and national Coastguard New Zealand’s Unit Support Volunteer of the Year awards and he was also one of Kiwibank’s New Zealand Local Heroes for his work with the Coastguard.
And in 2014 Hickey received a Chief of Army Commendation for the medical care he provided to Senior Constable Bruce Mellor, who was attacked with a machete near Taihape in December 2010. Hickey, then a Lance Corporal in the army, but off-duty, used his army medic training to apply first aid.
Hickey joined the army in January 2004 at the beginning of what would have been Year 13 at Francis Douglas Memorial College, he says.
‘‘I guess I knew from when I was 13 or 14 that’s what I wanted to do. The army was a good experience and good firm footing for where I am now. I made a lot of good mates.’’
He was based in Waiouru working as a medic and studied for a Diploma of Military Medicine, through Auckland University. It was a mixture of para medicine and practice nursing, he says.
In 2009 he went to Samoa after the island nation was hit by a tsunami, working alongside the 2HSB, which is a medical battalion based in Linton, he says.
‘‘Initially we helped with reestablishing the hospitals and then we did checks, alongside other medical agencies there, into the wellbeing of the locals.’’
The bottom half of the island was affected, he says.
‘‘It was a bit of a shock. Initially there was a bit of medical work to do, but then I was supporting our engineers with the rebuild.’’
After seven years in the army, Hickey left in 2011 to work as an on-site medic with Contact Energy in Stratford for 12 months. He then worked for Greymouth Petroleum on land-based rigs, working his way up to lead foreman.
Now he has two jobs: working at Vintage Lighting and at Oceans Alive Diving Centre.
In December he got his instructor’s ticket so he can teach people how to dive
He says he’s ‘‘looking forward to it, sharing the passion with people who are just getting into it’’.