Sir Edmund Hillary
Cover
‘I do like to sort of succeed’
by Maggie Barry
Continued from page 6...
It definitely made me more aware of the fact that I believed in justice … so in my early days I was not a happy child and I got my satisfaction out of walking around the hills and dreaming about dreams and reading book after book. I used to go and get a book from the library every day and read it on the way back to Tuakau and I would finish it in that time. And then the next day I would get another book. In a way I was finding my freedom by reading books – books about adventure – but it had quite a harsh effect on me and I certainly have never forgotten it.
It wouldn’t have helped your self-esteem?
I wasn’t worried about my self-esteem. I was worried about the fact that, for over a week at the end of the school day, I had to bend over, Jock would produce his whippy cane and give me six of the best. He wasn’t the best swipe, to tell you the honest truth, but it was embarrassing for me in front of the whole class.
**Did you hate him?
No, I didn’t hate him, I despised him.
JUNE: We went to an Old Boys’ Association thing not long ago, must have been 50th or 100th even, and he was asked to speak and he talked to them about the bullying at Grammar. There was quite a deathly hush, but he did it very well and very pointedly and very right in my opinion. I’d heard this, of course, before and I was amazed at the number of men who came to me in the street and the supermarkets and said, “I know exactly” – and they’re much younger than Ed – “I know exactly what he went through.” I was horrified.
How did you become more confident as you got older? Was it the climbing and the mountaineering?
When I started climbing and I became better at it and I started doing first ascents of some of the big peaks in the Southern Alps, I started realising that I wasn’t all that bad and not quite as stupid as all the teachers and all the other people had indicated. So I got increasing confidence as I went higher and higher, really, physically climbing. I climbed in Europe and then in the Himalayas, and I discovered that I was always the fittest person in the group. I mean I knew I could go up the mountainside faster than anybody else and this also gave me a great deal of confidence – probably why I got to the top of Everest.
Because of that confidence?
Because of that confidence. I knew that I could move fast, even at high altitude, and faster than anyone else in the team who were good climbers. I was also somewhat competitive, I have to admit. I was quite prepared to compete with companions on the trip. We were off on a climb up a ridge to get a good look at the possible routes on the mountain and then we would rush down again and I always made sure that I got up higher first and that I got down first. There was simply no doubt in my mind that that’s what I was going to do and I did it. So you know that gave me a great deal of confidence when I knew that even these renowned climbers – that I could leave them for dead if I had to.
So when you got to the summit and there was this international recognition of your and Sherpa Tenzing’s wonderful achievements, what did that do to you?
Well, it didn’t do too much, really. I was never so full of myself that it was unbearable to be around me. I didn’t have any feeling that I was anything special. I always remember, we got back to London and we were spending most of our time at the Royal Geographic Society, and I remember coming out of the RGS and just at that time a taxi came along and he was a very alert taxi driver. He pulled up, got out of his taxi and he said, “You’re Ed Hillary, aren’t you?”, and I said, “Yeah, yeah, ’course I am”, and he said, “Well, I’d like to thank you for everything that you’ve done for Britain.” I was a bit taken aback by that. I knew I had done quite well, but I definitely did not have a feeling of, you know, the high and mighty Ed Hillary. Far from it. It never even entered my mind.
Why not? When you compare it to the other satisfactions in your life, where does Everest fit in with the other things?
Oh, Everest was a big deal, but I was involved in many other adventures which, to me, were equally difficult, and I remained reasonably normal. I’ll tell you one of my little stories. We were invited to visit the Queen and we were meant to wear morning dress. Well, I don’t know anything about morning dress, but I had become very friendly with the director of the Royal Geographical Society, who was a tall chap like me, quite an adventurous man himself. He said, “Ed, don’t worry about it. I’ll lend you my morning dress.”
