Phil Melchior (1963-1967)

Phil Melchior’s career as a journalist and international media executive took him all around the world and into the highest echelons of media management but he is probably best known in New Zealand for his enormous contribution to LandSAR, particularly in the Wanaka area. 

Phil’s involvement with LandSAR started after his retirement from the position of global MD of Reuters Media and his family’s move to Wanaka. It did not take the local community long to realise what an asset they had on their doorstep and Phil’s fundraising and negotiating skills were used to great effect, ensuring that the Wanaka LandSAR team became the best equipped and most well-resourced search and rescue team in the country. Phil himself is a very competent mountaineer and took part in some of the team’s most difficult operations. In an interview with Jessica Maddock of the Otago Daily Times in 2015, Phil is described by team leader Brent Arthur: “He’s decisive, clear-thinking, you can trust him and he’s good company... he will help you in any way he can. There is no limitations on what he’s prepared to do for you.. it’s hard to know what to say about a guy like him.” 

This endorsement was written in an interview to promote the publication of Phil’s book Mountain Rescue – epic tales of search and rescue in high country New Zealand which chronicles 11 rescues in the Southern Alps. All proceeds from the book went to support LandSAR, Wanaka. What makes the book all the more remarkable is that Phil wrote most of it after his diagnosis with an extremely rare disease amyloidosis which attacked his heart. He was given six to nine months to live but after receiving cutting edge treatment at Auckland Hospital, he is still alive six years on. “An awful lot of my energy in the last three years has gone on trying not to die, basically, which, touch wood, I have managed quite successfully,” Phil told the ODT in 2015. 

Life threatening illnesses and life-saving rescues seem a far cry from his Lindisfarne school days but perhaps his experiences at Lindisfarne helped Phil prepare for what was to come: “The great lessons I learnt from Lindisfarne were about myself, and about getting on with others, developing the ability to influence and lead.” Phil recalls that Lindisfarne was a very different school in the 1960’s: “There were no cultural activities other than our band, “The Serrated Margin” so named because we were a bit rough around the edges. There was plenty of corporal punishment; masters used the cane and prefects the slipper. I was bullied in my first couple of years, mostly because of my German heritage but I wasn’t helped by my red-head’s temper!  Pretty much the first thing you got asked by other boys was, “What did your father do in the war?” Fighter pilot or long-range desert group was a great answer regardless of the truth but saying your father spent the war in an internment camp in Australia (as mine had done) was so negative as to be off the scale!” 

Despite all this, Phil went on to become a school prefect and captain of the 1st hockey XI and the basketball team. He also made great friends at Lindisfarne, some of whom are still close today. Unfortunately, Lindisfarne could not give Phil what he needed academically although he does attribute his failure to get UE to himself rather than his teachers. With university ruled out, Phil went off to Wellington to study journalism in night classes and business administration, rather less enthusiastically, during the day. 

Journalism won out in the end and Phil got his first job with The Wairoa Star in 1969. From there it was a steady climb through the ranks before joining Reuters in 1985 to establish their first New Zealand bureau in Wellington. After a stint in the Philippines, Phil moved into media management and again worked his way through the ranks and the globe to become global MD of Reuters in London. Some of the more dramatic stories that Phil has worked on over the years are the Philippines ferry disaster in 1987 in which 4400 people died, the Mr. Asia trial in England and the Rainbow Warrior incident. Since retiring from Reuters in 2001, Phil has been on the boards of TVNZ, Land Search and Rescue New Zealand, NZ Antarctica and the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute.  

Married to Barbara, since 1971 with two children, Nick and Sophie and two grandsons, Phil counts some of his proudest moment as those that relate to his family. Other achievements that feature are his career and climbing Aoraki/Mount Cook in 2009 to celebrate his 60th birthday.  Currently, Phil divides his time between Wanaka, Auckland and travelling and is passionate about food, wine and photography. Living in a wonderful place like Wanaka, it is a given that he is also an enthusiastic skier, tramper and mountaineer.