After Everest Read online

  Yet there were other occasions when Ed and Peter seemed like almost the same person. Either could have made the following statement about adventuring: ‘If you take on a major challenge, that makes you feel a little anxious and a little fearful, and you are challenging yourself. It’s not a pushover, and you know you are going to have difficulties.’ (It was Peter.)

  Throughout most of his life, Ed seemed slow to express admiration for Peter’s achievements. It may have been the primal ‘old bull’ problem, in Pat Booth’s phrase—feeling that the young male was going to replace him. There is no reason to think his intense competitiveness didn’t extend to his own son. Fathers and sons are naturally competitive.

  Or it may have been that he simply didn’t find what Peter did that impressive. We know, for instance, that he didn’t see much point to anyone else climbing Everest. When Peter set off to climb the west face of Ama Dablam, Ed wondered why he didn’t take on a less difficult challenge. Perhaps Ed’s attitude was a result of his inflexible candour and his refusal to say anything if he didn’t really mean it. Or perhaps Ed was trying to stay out of the way and let Peter get on with his own life.

  ‘I’ve always felt, as far as my son’s adventurous activities are concerned,’ Ed told HARDtalk, ‘that it’s really entirely up to him. If he asks for advice, which is very rare, I might say I give him what good advice I can. But I really feel that he has to meet his own challenges and overcome them, which he has done very successfully.’

  Peter himself is generous in praise of other mountaineers. ‘Some of the best young climbers are pushing standards still,’ he says. ‘They find better ways of doing things—that’s one of the exciting things about alpinism I think—there’s just endless opportunities.’ But Ed ‘was a very hard person to get praise out of,’ says Mike Gill, ‘particularly for his children to get praise. It was really hard, I think. He was that “man alone” sort of guy.’

  Ed was at his trademark candid best in a magazine story where he said that he was pleased about Peter’s first ascent of Everest because ‘it was obviously important to him . . . but personally I’d like to see him spend a little more time at home involved with his family and normal activities’.

  CHAPTER 12

  POLITICS

  New Zealanders on the whole prefer that people keep their opinions to themselves—unless those people are being paid for their opinions. There is an underlying belief that you can’t admire someone you don’t agree with—and contrariwise, that you can’t agree with someone you don’t admire personally. In more evolved societies, public figures of many kinds are welcome to contribute their opinions to a general debate in the interest of advancing ideas and generating productive discussion.

  Percy Hillary’s son was always going to have strong political views. Here the generations were in accord. It was Percy’s passion for social justice that inspired Ed’s, which was then fostered by experiences such as the encounter with the poor Fijian boy during the war and his exposure to the low standard of living in the Third World countries he had visited. Neither father nor son was a free-market enthusiast. Both believed that governments had not just the ability but the duty to help those less fortunate to get out of the economic mire. Neither would ever accept that the world had to be a place in which a few people lived lives of great material comfort while a far greater number struggled to eke out the most basic of existences.

  In Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, Ed lists the issues that caused him most concern. He deplored New Zealand’s poor foreign aid record, and the international poverty gap; he was opposed to nuclear testing anywhere, sporting contacts with South Africa and his home country’s enthusiasm for deifying athletes; he supported abortion law reform and family planning; and he took a keen interest in conservation issues. It wasn’t just that his views on these issues were left-leaning liberal—it seemed the only issues on which he held strong opinions were ones that appealed to liberals.

  One of Ed’s trademarks, as kindly described by Tom Scott, was his unflinching candour. If he believed something was true, he would say so without the benefit of sugar coating. That this would cause him problems publicly was not likely to stop him. That it also could hurt those around him—well, that was regrettable, but if the thing were true he was going to say it.

  So in 1967, when he spoke to a group of Auckland secondary school head prefects at a Rotary Club-sponsored lunch, he made honesty and candour one of his themes. He took the opportunity to implore these future leaders, when their turn came, to ‘bring a little more honest-to-God morality into politics and government at all levels nationally and internationally. It horrifies me the way a head of state can one moment deny vehemently that his country is carrying on some particular action, and then a couple of days later and with complete calmness admit the whole thing.’

  As the first president of Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA) in New Zealand, he encouraged his young audience to give up some time to working to help those less fortunate. And he lambasted the ‘expediency and just plain dishonesty of utterances’ prevalent in government.

  From this distance it’s hard to see anything wrong with an exhortation for honesty in public life. Yet the reaction of the then prime minister, Sir Keith Holyoake, was so strong that Ed had obviously touched a nerve. At a subsequent function organised by the VSA, the country’s leader pointedly ignored the Hero of Everest.

  But Holyoake earned a gold medal in cheek-turning compared to one of his National Party successors as prime minister, the pugilistic, small-minded Rob Muldoon. Ed’s hatred of bullying was as strong as his passion for social justice. Nearly everyone interviewed for this book, when asked what annoyed Ed, mentioned Muldoon in their first breath and politicians in general in their second.

  After one of Ed’s semi-regular pleas for a greater government commitment to foreign aid, then finance minister Muldoon rose to the bait. ‘Sir Edmund,’ he said, ‘knows as much about economics as I know about mountain climbing.’

  Ed was annoyed. ‘Actually, I know quite a lot about economics,’ he told Tom Scott later. Indubitably more than Rob Muldoon knew about mountaineering. According to Scott, Ed also ‘followed global politics closely. He was informed and curious about lots of things—medicine, health, sanitation, forestry.’

  ‘Muldoon was quite vicious,’ recalls Ken Richardson, a high-ranking public servant and diplomat who would observe Ed—and many prominent political figures—at close range off and on over the years. A brief foray into politics by Ed made him a confirmed enemy of Muldoon, and brought the adventurer more public criticism than anything in his life, apart from the South Pole debacle. Bill Rowling had become New Zealand prime minister by default, following the death of the charismatic Labour leader Norman Kirk in 1974. A man whose private abilities were far greater than any public impression he was able to make, Rowling was easy meat for Muldoon, and Labour supporters were desperate for a way to boost his image, even if it was only by creating charisma by association.

  Television journalist David Exel attempted to come to the rescue when he led the formation of a group called Citizens for Rowling. These were prominent people who were happy to back the Labour leader in public—as much, it has to be admitted, out of distaste for Muldoon as enthusiasm for Rowling. The prominent figures included businessman and baronet Jack Harris, law professor Geoffrey Palmer (who went on to become prime minister briefly in 1989 and proved to have even less charisma than Rowling), Paul Reeves (an Anglican bishop who became governor-general of New Zealand in 1985) and Ed. Citizens for Rowling published newspaper ads and a booklet; and the words they used were as personal as anything Muldoon had ever uttered, if not more so.

  In a historical footnote, Ed nearly became governor-general before Reeves. During Muldoon’s subsequent time in office and two years after the Citizens for Rowling campaign, Keith Holyoake was appointed governor-general. Rowling, still leader of the Opposition, denounced what was seen as a political appointment and said that, were he in a position to do so, he w
ould have appointed Ed as governor-general. This only served to embarrass Ed further, as it called into question his motives for backing Rowling in the first place.

  Rowling knew nothing of David Exel’s campaign until the last minute—and it was a failure. The reasons most frequently cited are that Rowling was beyond saving; and that the electorate reacted badly to being advised how to vote by a self-appointed group that was seen as élitist. Muldoon’s tenure as prime minister ended in 1984.

  ‘Anyone from the Citizens for Rowling campaign never got any government appointments at all,’ says Richardson. ‘That was Muldoon—he was very vindictive.’

  Ed’s stature was such that he got off lightly compared to others involved, including Exel himself. ‘David Exel couldn’t get work in New Zealand TV,’ says former cabinet minister Judith Tizard, a member of the Labour Party dynasty. ‘He had to go to Australia. It was a vicious and calculated attack on them all coming from Muldoon. Everything around Muldoon was rancid.’

  Muldoon may not have been able to affect Ed’s career, but he still managed to find an elegant way to exact his revenge, according to a story told by mountaineer and long-time Himalayan Trust member Norm Hardie. ‘During the Kirk government years, a move was made for New Zealand to look into establishing an Everest National Park,’ says Hardie. ‘Two government staff went on a reconnaissance, and I went on behalf of the Trust. We made a favourable report. Kirk died, and in the Rowling years the park began with New Zealand government funding for five years and the inference a further five would follow.’

  Then came Citizens for Rowling and Rob Muldoon’s ascendancy to the prime minister’s office. ‘The Everest Park funding was allowed to go its promised five years, then stopped. The Himalayan Trust had no government support and some firms that might have been Trust donors were reluctant to show support, knowing the venom of the Muldoon revenge.’

  The charge of being élitist alone would have been enough to make Ed regret his participation. People who are seldom criticised tend to develop a hypersensitivity to it, and Ed received so little negative commentary during his career that it seems to have been ill received whenever it occurred. Again, this trait is not unknown among people who are happy to dispense criticism.

  It’s notable that, despite high public awareness of the affair, Ed never referred to it in either of his volumes of autobiography, let alone attempted to explain what he was thinking. But no one could misinterpret Ed’s views on issues, which were always consistent and clear.

  ‘Ed always said he was a social democrat,’ says friend and fellow adventurer Murray Jones. ‘And he always believed in those traditional values New Zealand had before [the free-market experiments of ] Roger Douglas. The greatest thing he could give to the Sherpas was education and health and, when you think about that, it’s the greatest gift you can give anyone.’

  ‘I thought [Citizens for Rowling] was a bad mistake,’ says Booth. ‘Although an ingenuous one. He hadn’t grasped that he was not the beekeeper who could be called in by a local committee and give his support for a new road.’

  According to Mike Gill, Ed had been annoyed by Holyoake’s negative reaction to his Rotary lunch comments ‘and with the Bill Rowling thing he realised he’d made a mistake. I think Louise said “I don’t think you should do this,” but he did and it was a mistake. Ed learnt from that sort of thing and he kept his head down.’

  He may have kept his head down, but he didn’t keep his mouth shut. Ed remained outspoken. If anything, the experience taught him to choose his moment and to avoid anything that linked him to party affiliation. Ironically, according to Tom Scott, he had been approached to stand for National in his home suburb of Remuera—the bluest of blue-ribbon seats—in the euphoric post-Everest years. At the same time, Judith Tizard is convinced his heart lay on the other side of the House: ‘Ed was passionately Labour,’ says Tizard. ‘He was absolutely passionate that the point of being a New Zealander was giving everything a go and being entitled to do anything. He saw that as the heritage he had from the first Labour government.’

  Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark became a good friend of Ed and June’s late in life and was a neighbour at Waihi, where the Hillarys had a weekender. Because of that, says Scott, and because David Lange sent him to India as New Zealand high commissioner, the Labour Party thought he was theirs and the National Party thought he was Labour’s too. In the end, says Scott, ‘he was above party politics. If Labour had a better foreign policy in terms of aid, so be it. But [National’s] Don McKinnon admired him enormously and helped do things for Ed. People would claim ownership, but Ed needed the goodwill of all the governments to continue his aid work.’

  Ed almost became involved in one of the great New Zealand protests of his lifetime—the campaign against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. ‘There was Peter Mulgrew, me, Ed,’ says Graeme Dingle. ‘One time, we were really drunk on Scotch whisky. We made a pledge that the next day Peter would get a ship and we would sail to Mururoa to protest against nuclear testing. The next day, when we were all sober, I was the only one who still wanted to go ahead. I was really pissed off, but I was much younger and didn’t have the same level of responsibilities. So they reflected on the promise and decided it wasn’t a very good idea after all.’

  Tom Scott brings the story of Ed’s disinterestedness in the matter of party politics up to date: ‘Most of Ed’s friends in America were Republicans. Ed said: “We can’t discuss politics because I don’t agree with them, but really nice people can have strange views. You can’t generalise.” He judged people on how they behaved personally. The fact that Republicans were raising huge amounts of money for people on the other side of the world made them decent in Ed’s book.’

  CHAPTER 13

  INDIA

  In 1985 at the age of 66, when many people have chosen to retire, Ed started work at the first regular job he ever had, as New Zealand High Commissioner to India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

  In 1982 the increasingly erratic Prime Minister Muldoon, following a disagreement with the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, had decided to close down New Zealand’s high commission in New Delhi. The reason given was that New Zealand needed to save money. The Indian Government did not reciprocate, instead noting, somewhat cattily, that ‘it understood the financial difficulties of the New Zealand Government and hoped that the mission would soon be reopened’.

  His first snub having failed to wound sufficiently, Muldoon’s government then announced that it planned to sell a plum piece of vacant Delhi land in Chanakyapuri, the diplomatic nerve centre of Delhi. India had given this to New Zealand twelve years before as the site for a new building.

  Relations had been pushed as far as they could go without collapsing altogether, but within a year—and before the land could be sold—there had been a change of government in New Zealand. When Labour’s David Lange—an enthusiastic Indophile—became prime minister, restoration of good relations between the two countries was a top priority. ‘David was very keen,’ says Lange’s first wife, Naomi, ‘knowing India and knowing so many people over there and they do amazing things with trade—he was just very keen to get it reopened. David thought it was crazy just to ignore them.’

  Who better to mend the fence than Ed Hillary? ‘He was the obvious choice because Ed was loved by the Indian people because of his work in Nepal. The Indians thought the world of him; he had a great rapport with them . . . All the Indians knew who he was and how great he was.’

  It might have seemed obvious, but it could have been disastrous. Ed was indeed adored by millions of Indians, but he would not be working with them every day. He would be representing New Zealand at a diplomatic level. And diplomatic was not a word that had often been applied to Ed. He was easily bored, and diplomatic functions usually have an element of boredom built into them. And he would be dealing with career diplomats who were set in their ways and possibly resistant to being saddled with an adventurer in the top
job. But he was no stranger to bureaucracy in this part of the world, having survived the negotiations that ensued after the illicit climb of Ama Dablam. It remained to be seen how well Lange’s masterstroke would actually play out—if Ed took the job.

  The phone call has become part of the legend. Ed answered it and the prime minister identified himself.

  ‘David who?’

  The prime minister was unimpressed but ploughed on and invited Ed to his Auckland home, where they would discuss the possibility of him taking on the role. Ed described himself as ‘flabbergasted’.While Lange’s son Roy made the tea, a nervous Ed seemed most concerned with whether or not the job came with a car. He was an old India hand, but not at this level. Lange explained that there would be more than one car, plus a large staff. ‘I don’t think Ed had any idea of what it would involve,’ says Naomi Lange. ‘You learn on the job. There are other people taking care of things, but I think he was used to taking care of things himself.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Ed.

  ‘I want you to do precisely what you think is right,’ said Lange. As a job description, it was quintessential Lange—expansive, imaginative and very short on mundane detail.

  Ed had felt the burden of his grief for Louise and Belinda lighten somewhat in India during the Ganges trip, notably when receiving a blessing from a young Hindu priest at Varanasi. Interviewer Maggie Barry, discussing the appointment in the 2007 Listener interview, asked whether India had a healing effect on him. ‘I suppose it has,’ said Ed. ‘I’ve never particularly thought of it in that way. But if an occasion occurs which I’m sad about, then I think India has a warming effect—and I’d go there tomorrow.’