Sir Edmund Hillary
Cover
‘I do like to sort of succeed’
by Maggie Barry
Continued from page 1...
Did you punish your children? Did you hit your children?
I can remember with my three kids only one occasion that I actually struck Peter. I was not a beater of children and as a consequence I’ve always been, I think, very agreeable and co-operative.
Were you stubborn as a child?
Oh, I was incredibly stubborn, oh yes. I mean, I believe that my father was frequently in the right, but I would never admit it, and so we did have a few set-tos on various topics; but on the whole as I got older and my father got more mature we got along reasonably well.
My mother really was the strength in our family. She would sort of keep us in line and I admired her very much … my grandmother I admired even more. She was an Irish lady and a very kind-hearted person. She had a lot of talent, she painted extremely well. She was quite a strong factor in my life.
Do you think that the stubbornness and determination as a child were the factors you needed to conquer the things that you have?
Yes, it all really developed in a way. I was a dreamer when I was at high school and even primary school. I used to dream about doing adventurous things. I had a very strong desire to carry out adventures, but in those early days I didn’t actually do any. I just dreamt about it.
But then I started to become more active and when I was at Auckland Grammar I went for the first time to the mountains. I went to Ruapehu and for the first time I saw snow. I had never seen snow before and for 10 days the group of us had a marvellous time. I had never experienced anything like it before and I don’t think I have experienced anything like it since. It was my dreams coming true in a way, and from there on I tended to become more of a doer than a dreamer.
I’d like to bring June in here. The two of you, when you met, had a lot in common. You’d known each other for a number of years and you worked together, it seems to me, very well as a team. Tell me about who organises things in your lives. Who’s in charge on the home front, Sir Ed?
JUNE: I wouldn’t answer that.
ED: No, June is a very strong influence in my life and particularly now in my ancient years there is no doubt at all: if there’s a decision to be made, quite often June is the one who makes it.
And do you agree?
We shared a philosophy together. We believed very strongly in the welfare of helping other people, particularly the Third World people.
And June, you work together as a team – how do you decide what you’d like to do when you’re offered things to –
ED: She’s the most determined lady.
JUNE: Well, we do get an amazing number of invitations to do things, even these days, and to go a long way to do them. And we talk about them. I say, “What do you think about this?” And I see Ed’s face drop and I think, “Oh, that’s good.” It’s a long way, who wants to go there for lunch when it’s the other side of the world?
So those sort of decisions are pretty easy, and on the home front I think if it needs fixing, then I get it fixed – that’s how we work, don’t we?
What activities do you like to do? What do you like to do now to stave off boredom?
JUNE: It’s a major thing for Ed.
ED: Well, I love sports and certainly listening to sports.
JUNE: And watching.
ED: So I do listen to quite a lot of television.
JUNE: We try to have a walk every day, too, which is quite good. And that’s quite fun because you see the same people and because we’re in such a fabulous spot round at the waterfront here, it’s lovely. So we do that mostly.
ED: And then we have a place, or two places, at the beach. We had a place at Whites Beach, which is just near Piha, but then our families started using it and we reached the situation where we really had to ring up the kids and find out whether or not there was space available for us, so we decided we would get another modest place and we did, in – where are we?
JUNE: Waihi Beach.
ED: Waihi Beach. It’s a lovely beach, and we’re right on the shore and I get a lot of pleasure out of waking up in the morning and hearing the waves roll in.
How do you convince others to be enthusiastic if they are losing heart a little bit?
