As surely as the fine Italianate structure that now houses the Customs House Hotel has long held a physical presence in Newcastle’s harbour life, the Westpac rescue helicopter service has maintained a reassuring presence in the Hunter’s community life since 1975. 

And for more than half the service’s existence in the region, Richard Jones has been at the helm. He has been with the service since 1995. 

“It certainly doesn’t feel that,” Jones says. “November 1995. Wow. What we had; the budget was about $3 million, and we had 15 staff.” Now, he points out, the service’s budget is about $42 million and has 130 staff, with an operational area that has expanded to take in the state’s north-west and far north coast.

“But it’s gone just like that,” Jones adds, clicking his fingers. “Because it’s so dynamic.”  

AS a kid, Richard Jones didn’t so much look to the sky, but at the surf and the footy field. That’s where he wanted to be. 

Jones was born in 1962, the fourth of six children, in Cardiff. When he was very young, the family shifted to Merewether Heights, overlooking the coast. A few years later, they moved even closer to the waves at Bar Beach.    

Young Richard was constantly at the beach, surfing. When he wasn’t wet, he was getting dirty, playing rugby league with his mates at South Newcastle.

If he imagined a life in sport, that was knocked into perspective when Jones was sent to Sydney, for four years of high school at Waverley College. The pond suddenly got bigger, and he felt a whole lot smaller – “I was the smallest kid by far”. What’s more, he had to play rugby union, but in a champion team.

“It was a game of footy, didn’t matter to me,” he shrugs. “It was a game, and we were always winning. 

“So my four-year career at Waverley was undefeated. I thought, ‘This is easy!’.”

Jones returned to Newcastle for his senior high school years. His HSC results, he says, were less than stellar, as he was too busy with “surfing and footy and being a young man”.

“I was never a scholar and was having too much fun, I think,” he says. 

Jones began an apprenticeship at the BHP steelworks. He was training to be a fitter and turner, but that’s not what he saw for himself.

“I must admit, I was never going to be a fitter and turner,” Jones says. 

“When I walk into the hangar now and I see the engineers working on $18 million helicopters and I say, ‘You do know that I did a year of a fitting and turning apprenticeship, so what would you like me to do?’, they just say, ‘Go back to your office. Don’t touch anything!’”

His exit from the trade came via a phone call from a friend of his father’s, who was manager of the under-18s President’s Cup team for St George. Richard was invited to Sydney to trial. He subsequently played in the premiership winning team in 1981.  

“It was evident footy was going to take over, so I bailed out [of the apprenticeship] after 12 months,” Jones says. “I went to Sydney basically full-time.”

The boy who had supported the South Sydney Rabbitohs came to pull on a jersey with the famed red V. Over four seasons from 1982, Jones played 12 first grade games for the Dragons, playing alongside club giants Craig Young, Rod Reddy and Michael O’Connor, and he was coached by Roy Masters. He was on the bench for the Under-23s side in 1985, when the Dragons had its three top teams make the grand final: “What a time to be involved in the club!”  

Jones may have touched the big time in rugby league, but he was hardly in the money. He commuted to Wyong, working at a hotel his family had bought, and he did various jobs around the St George region.

“My biggest contract was $12,000 for the season,” he recalls. “And we all had jobs. We all worked. But it was just a really good club environment.

“I don’t know whether we had the best of it, we certainly didn’t get the money, but for that team and the camaraderie thing, it was a whole lot different. That’s what I feel for the players these days. 

“Yes, they get a lot of dough, and good on them, but I reckon these days there’s a lot of really good athletes playing, but not a lot of real old-school footballers.”

When asked who he supports in the NRL these days, Jones is diplomatic.

“Look, I have a soft spot for the Dragons,” he replies. “I know a lot of the Knights guys, certainly know the hierarchy, we’re a charity partner, there’s lots of similarities between what they do and what we do with the community aspect. And it’s the home team, the home town. So I’ve got two teams to call on, if things go wrong in my world!”

After the 1985 season, Jones had decided to head back to Newcastle. He was about to marry his girlfriend, Debbie, in Newcastle, who was graduating to be a teacher. He thought about all the training, all the commuting, involved with his Sydney career: “I made the choice to come home.”

Jones returned to Souths, playing for four seasons, and leading them to the premiership twice. After a year as captain-coach for the Singleton Greyhounds, he was back playing for Souths and was named Country Player of the Year in 1991. Yet he injured his knee “and it never got better”. Jones managed to squeeze a little more league out of his body, playing for six months for a team in France. He reflects rehabilitation then wasn’t like now. 

“If we had an ice bath in our day, you couldn’t fit any people in it, it would have been full of [beer] tins,” he chuckles.

Richard Jones remained connected to rugby league in other ways. He worked at Souths and was part of the commentary team for NBN’s coverage of Knights games. Another team member was former Knights coach Allan McMahon. 

“Allan was running the helicopter [service] in the early 90s, and we started talking about it,” Jones says. “Then one day Allan told us he was going back to coach Illawarra. I guess I thought, ‘I might have a go at that’.”

Jones explains how in the office of real estate agent Colin Chapman, a group of businesspeople schooled him in applying for the job: “I’d never had a job interview, it was the first one I’d ever been to. Col lent me an old soft briefcase to take along, because it looked good. And I had to buy a suit.”

What got him the job in 1995, Jones believes, is what he still brings to the chief executive officer’s position, and what has always been a cornerstone of the service’s operation: community connections.  

While it has contracts with NSW Health and NSW Ambulance, the service has to find $12 million annually, from corporate sponsorships to volunteers running op shops and holding barbecues.

So Jones sees his key role as maintaining relationships, both within the organisation, and with the community. Before our lunch, he had been in a teleconference with Westpac, finalising a new sponsorship agreement. On the weekend, he had emceed a fund-raising ball in Tamworth. There are dinners and golf days: “That was always the joke about me – make your job your hobby. Go out to lunch, play golf.”

But that’s the job, he says, to help keep the helicopters flying, with 510 missions in the Hunter alone in the past year.

The demand on his time means Jones doesn’t see Debbie and their two children, 13-year-old daughter Averil and son Ash, 10, as much as he desires. 

“I swore that I’d back off, but it’s probably gone the other way,” he admits. 

He’d love to be in the surf on a board, but the old footy injuries have ruled that out – “I couldn’t get up”. 

So Richard Jones will continue attending events, far and wide, telling anyone who will listen about the life-saving relationship they have with the rescue helicopter service:  “If you help with your hard-earned, we’ll provide you with a service you can’t break. It’ll be there when it’s needed.”