I can't find a thread for this, my apologies if there is already one!



I wrote this before one of the board changes (not 1970, but a while ago!) in the quotes thread.

Sir Edmund Hillary passed away earlier this year. He will always be known throughout the world as one of the first two people to climb Mt Everest. While a few people on here might argue for Peter Jackson, he is easily NZs most well known person, featuring on the $5 bank note, and also known for being amazingly modest about his achievements. He did an amazing amount of work in Nepal for sherpa communities.

His ashes will likely be scattered from the STS Spirit of New Zealand (a tall ship) in the next couple of days, as per his request to have them near where he was born to bring his life ina full circle.

NZ is a lesser place without him, there is a lot of talk about how best to remember him, by keeping a $5 note in your pocket to give to someone in need, renaming one of our mountains, a national holiday.... Not much has come out of it yet. But for me, that quote above sums it up. Sir Ed never saw himself as extraordinary, just an ordinary person who was determined. That can be all of us.

RIP Sir Ed.

I always thought of this gentleman as almost a mythological sort of person; what he did and when he did it evoke a sense of mystery and romance and that feeling you get when you go outside after a dreadful snow storm and realize you are the only one out and about , the only one that has so far trod upon that blinding white ground.
Wonderful man.