50 years after Everest conquest

2003-05-29 13:32

Auckland - There is that single Mount Everest image everybody knows; Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, left foot forward and holding an ice pick with four flags attached, standing atop the world's highest peak on May 29, 1953.

Edmund Hillary took the photo but there is no picture of him on the summit.

There is, however, another photo that sums up the man.

Taken in 1961 it shows a 15-year-old Nepalese boy holding a scroll of paper reaching to the ground, on which are the names of 60 children asking for a school in their village of Thami. Towering over him, hands on hips, is Hillary.

His Himalayan Trust has built 27 schools, two hospitals and about a dozen medical clinics using, said Hillary, "practical skills and plenty of number eight wire".

In an interview earlier this year, the 83-year-old Hillary, the one-time beekeeper who celebrates being "an ordinary bloke", was passionate about fairness.

People in places like Nepal, he said, no more asked to live in poverty than New Zealanders were responsible for their affluence.

Life-changing

"The fact that we do is a blessing, and with it comes responsibilities," he said.

Since summiting Everest at 11:30 that day there have been thousands of interviews and books.

Finding something new to say about it is all but impossible for a man so accessible he is in the Auckland phone book: "Hillary Sir Edmund 278A Remuera Rd..."

He was born Edmund Percival Hillary on July 20, 1919, the son of a Great War veteran wounded at Gallipoli. During World War II Ed and brother Rex became conscientious objectors.

Rex was locked up for the war and Ed changed his mind and joined the air force operating out of Fiji on Catalinas.

After the war Hillary began mountaineering, falling in with Harry Ayres who became his mentor.

While climbing the Southern Alps Hillary decided he and some friends, including George Lowe, should try the Himalayas which they did, winning attention from the international climbing community.

English soldier John Hunt in 1953 put together an expedition to scale Everest, recruiting the world's best climbers for the attempt to tackle the 8 848 metre peak.

Lowe was at the highest camp when Hillary and Norgay arrived back from the summit. They looked a little tired, he said.

'Tremendous honour'

"Ed unclipped his mask and grinned a tired greeting, sat on the ice and said in his matter-of-fact way: 'Well, we knocked the bastard off!'"

The conquest coincided with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II who promptly knighted Hillary, leaving him aghast.

"It was a tremendous honour, of course, but I had never really approved of titles and couldn't really imagine myself possessing one," he wrote.

In 1957-58 he joined the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Vivian Fuchs. Hillary and close friend Peter Mulgrew sparked controversy by racing the New Zealand team, against Fuchs' orders, to the South Pole first.

The Himalayan Trust was family duty and on March 31, 1975, Ed's wife, Louise, and daughter Belinda died in a plane crash in Nepal flying to a project.

Affection for India was sealed with a 1977 jet-boat expedition, including son Peter, from the Ganges River mouth to the Himalayas.

Tens of thousands of people greeted him prompting an Indian reporter to ask if he knew that he was being seen as god. Replied Hillary: "Well I know I'm not, so it doesn't bother me."

In 1984 Hillary became New Zealand's envoy to India and Nepal taking with him an "official companion" - June, the widow of Peter Mulgrew, who died in a 1979 Antarctic plane crash. June and Ed are now married.

Being accessible Hillary often gets asked his opinion, even now about climbing. He is mostly forgiving of modern climbing.

He has almost never been seen angry in public but did so in 1999 when an American expedition found the body of celebrated English climber George Mallory who disappeared near the peak in 1924. He was outraged they released a photo of the body, saying it was an "unpleasant and unkindly thing to do".

If it could be proven that Mallory got to the peak first, Hillary said he would be perfectly happy: "For 45 years now it's been accepted that I was first to reach the summit so I couldn't complain too much."

- AFX