Sir Edmund Hillary
Cover
‘I do like to sort of succeed’
by Maggie Barry
Continued from page 5...
ED: We had so much in common that we just carried on with life as we had been doing. It wasn’t easy, but it was – I realise now that it was the only thing to do.
And did that determination, and maybe stubbornness, help you through those difficult years?
No question about it. No, as I was saying, I crossed through the village of Boon, which is a very, very remote place, and I would be crossing rivers and I had my very good Sherpa friends with me and they refused to let me be depressed. Absolutely refused.
JUNE: They have a rule – mourning for a year, and to the day you switch it off, and that’s it, buster.
I’d like to ask about your childhood and how you grew six inches in one year and five inches in the other. If it’s all right with you, I’d just like to talk about being a little guy and then becoming a big guy.
That’s okay, but I just don’t want to delve deeply into my childhood history and all the rest of it.
Sure.
Because I find it uncomfortable anyway.
You’re known as a big robust man, but when you were little you were very little. When you started to grow, did your attitude change very much?
No, I almost wasn’t aware that I had the change physically. I suddenly realised that instead of being a small person, even at Auckland Grammar, that I was rather larger than the majority of people of the classes I was in. That had advantages, but it also had certain disadvantages.
Which were?
Well, perhaps I should tell you the story of Jock Barron [not his real name]. I was in a class in which he was the main teacher and I wouldn’t want his name mentioned – he’s dead anyway, I think – but he had very rigid views on what was right and what was wrong. His main teaching was for French and he was very strict about people doing their homework. And travelling each day from Tuakau by the train, I was doing a great deal of travelling, and finally I summoned up my courage and approached Mr Barron and pointed out to him that to carry out all the work he had given us meant I was getting home at, I think it was, seven or eight at night.
Well, he was, he thought, a very just man, and he said, “Well, I can’t make an exception for you that’s different from all the others in the class. I’ll let you make your mind up what do to. You can leave on time to catch your train or I will swipe you in front of the class.”
Well, I wasn’t very keen on being swiped in front of the class but I was also slightly stubborn, so for the whole week he had me out at the end of the day and beat me. He wasn’t a very good swiper but it was a mortifying experience for me.
Well, my parents suddenly realised that something funny was going on and with considerable reluctance I told them what had happened. So they insisted – my mother particularly, who was a very kind, not a pushy person at all – she wrote a letter for me to give to the headmaster, which I wasn’t very keen on doing.
It was a couple of days before I was able to summon up the courage to hand the letter in to the headmaster, but I duly did hand it in to him. He then called Jock Barron and me to his study and he was very annoyed at what Jock Barron had done, so he spoke somewhat harshly to him and more or less let me off and told me, you know, that I should definitely go and catch my train each time.
So that’s what happened.
So I never did ever like Jock Barron and I just didn’t ever learn to understand his views. He was a hard man.
So you never forgave him?
That was one of the things that [meant] maybe really I didn’t enjoy Grammar at all. I managed to pass the exams and go to university, although that was a pretty hopeless repertoire I had at university, but it definitely did have an effect on me – of injustice – that my teacher had unfairly, in my view, used his power to force me really to do something I didn’t want to do.
I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, I’ve never told anyone before.
That made you even more determined not to – you hated injustice, perhaps?
