Ian Mackersey

Ian Mackersey's love of aviation manifested on film, in books, and in the air. 

Born in Wellington on 14 October 1925, Mackersey began his working life as a journalist, writing for The Dominion and The New Zealand Herald. In 1948, having learnt to fly, he left for England, hoping to join the Royal Air Force. Instead, he would spend more than six years writing (and travelling) for various RAF publications, while also flying part-time for the RAF's volunteer reserve. His time at the RAF was punctuated by a year in Hong Kong, working on the night shift for the South China Morning Post.

Mackersey first got involved in filmmaking in Africa. In 1958 he moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where he edited a magazine for copper mining company Roan Selection Trust. In the mid 1960s, the company sent him to Zambia, which had recently won independence. Mackersey produced films for the trust about their Copperbelt mines, and featured in another, Snow on the Equator. Shot on a windup Bolex camera, it chronicled a 1962 expedition Mackersey made into the Rwenzori Mountains (aka the Mountains of the Moon), whose upper reaches are permanently under snow. 

Perhaps the most successful film he produced in this period was Luapula Journey (1965), which screened across Africa for decades and was invited to the Edinburgh Festival. Chronicling a week in the life of a Zambian fish trader, the documentary was shot in the local Bemba language. An English narration was added for Western audiences. 

By late 1965, Mackersey was back in the United Kingdom. Soon after, he began a long run at state-owned airline BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), which later became British Airways. Mackersey managed the airline's film, television, and photographic operations, and produced many award-winning films about the airline's operations and its showpiece aircraft, the Concorde. 

After 35 years overseas, Mackersey returned to New Zealand in 1983, settling in Auckland with his wife Caroline, a BBC researcher. Over the next five years, the couple worked on several documentaries, including Living with Blindness (1983) and Fuel for 2000 (1987). The latter looked at alternative fuel resources. TVNZ screened both of them.

In this period, the state broadcaster was exploring ways it might mark 25 years of local television. Mackersey was commissioned to write, direct, and produce one-off documentary Network New Zealand (1985), which chronicled a day in the life of TVNZ, from broadcasting technicians to programme-makers. "The style, approach, content and length were left to me", said Mackersey. "I was in fact offered a very free hand to tackle the subject in any way I chose." He argued that "it would have been extraordinarily difficult for an insider to have done it with the detachment it needed."

Mackersey felt that the two local channels had "developed a remarkably professional operation . . . Frankly, it gives its audiences a considerably higher standard and variety of programmes than the services of many bigger countries — and among them I have to include America."

His next screen project would kick-start a series of books. Jean Batten: The Garbo of the Skies (1988) told the story of the pioneering Kiwi aviator who broke multiple solo-flying records. During production, the Mackerseys finally solved the mystery of where Batten had died, after she vanished from public view. Three years later, Mackersey published a biography of Batten with the same title.

Mackersey devoted the rest of his life to writing. In all he wrote nine books, six of them involving aviation. His first run of books dates back to the 1950s, after he moved to London. A 1954 biography of British waterways travel pioneer L.T.C Rolt was followed within two years by a novel and three further non-fiction works.

Following his 1991 biography of Jean Batten, Mackersey went on to write biographies of Australian aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, and the Wright brothers. His final book No Empty Chairs (2012) was about the Royal Flying Corps in World War One.

Ian Mackersey died in Auckland on 28 April 2015.

Profile published on 1 October 2025

Sources include
Paula Mackersey
Ian Mackersey website. Accessed 1 October 2025
Ian Mackersey, 'Behind the screens' - The Listener , 6 April 1985, page 74
'Ian Mackersey'  Read NZ/Te Pou  Muramura website. Accessed 1 October 2025
British Film Institute
'Ian MACKERSEY Obituary' - The NZ Herald, 5 May 2015
Unknown writer, 'Chibulumba Mines' Metorex website. Accessed 1 October 2025