by Paul Little
Hardie himself remained with the Trust till 1988. ‘I resigned over the differences I had with Ed and Rex . . . In doing so I said to Ed I hoped the other old ones would also retire (meaning Rex) and that young workers would replace us. I had said in the past that Ed should have taken Peter on early American tours so that continuity would occur, and that Peter should be on the board. Nothing came of my wishes.’
According to a story in the Sunday Star-Times, in 2002, in what seemed to outsiders an unpaternal gesture at best, Ed prevented Peter from gaining control of the Trust board. If Ed, as he had said, did not approve of dynasties, he was going out of his way to demonstrate to what extent he disapproved. ‘That was ludicrous,’ says Mike Gill, who blames the tension between June and Peter for the move. It was tension, he says, that sometimes rose to the surface.
Some commentators suggest that it is odd for Peter yet again to want to do something his father did superbly well; but in fact, it’s the most natural thing in the world. No one queries the logic of a Ford going into the automobile business, or a Rockefeller into banking, or a Redgrave into acting.
Old friends and allies—people whose bonds had been forged on high adventures with Ed—suddenly found themselves having to take sides. ‘I have taken Peter and Sarah’s side,’ says Mike Gill, adding that ‘pretty much’ everybody else has too. ‘I was a very good friend of Jim Wilson’s; but he is a very good friend of June’s, so we had a bust-up. June expects loyalty. With June you are either in, or you are out.’
From 2002 June held sway at the Trust, supported by many of the old guard, such as Jones and Wilson, who continued to support her after Ed’s death. ‘Jim and I are only doing what we think Ed would [have wanted],’ says Jones. ‘He told people he wanted June to carry on with his work with the Himalayan Trust, and she did. That’s why we supported her, because she was carrying on Ed’s work; but others couldn’t accept that for whatever other reason, and I don’t really understand their reasons.’
Underpinning the family conflict were some serious philosophical differences about how the Trust should work and in which direction it should go. Even Hilary Carlisle felt some things needed to be changed. ‘The Himalayan Trust was done on Kiwi ingenuity—No. 8 wire,’ says Hilary, ‘and actually in the modern world it needed to be more robust. The accounts are complex, with all the different currencies—the Nepalese accounts, the Americans, the Canadians, the British accounts. Imagine doing it by hand.’
‘Peter wanted to corporatise everything,’ says Murray Jones, ‘and Ed didn’t believe in that. Ed did all the work himself, apart from Betty Joplin, his secretary, and he wasn’t getting any money from it. There was no middle man getting a cut. He was a one-man band.’ (He was actually a two-man band—Mingma Tsering was the Himalayan Trust in Nepal.)
‘There was no office as such,’ adds Jones. ‘It was just his study. Ed did most of the books, but in the end he got Doug Page to do the books.’ But some weren’t happy with Page. When Mike Gill questioned his ability, ‘I couldn’t get anywhere. I would talk to Ed about it and he’d say he’d get back to me. When he did, he would say, “No”. So that was the way it went.’
One key difference of opinion was over who should direct the way the aid was used: Should the money be handed over to the Sherpas to do with as they saw fit; or should the projects be driven by the Trust?
Ed had always taken the first view. The Trust only existed because he asked Sherpa Urkien what the locals needed that he might be able to provide for them. And even in the days when he carried around his sack of cash, that cash was distributed to people based on what they told him they needed. He never changed his view.
‘June and Ed decided,’ says Jones, ‘and this was [Prime Minister] Helen Clark’s policy at the time, that it was for the local people to run their aid work. [The New Zealand Government makes a substantial contribution annually to the Himalayan Trust.] The day of the white man over there is long gone. And some people in the Himalayan Trust in New Zealand cannot accept that. They feel they have to be the guiding white man and give them the guiding hand. Ed and June never accepted that. The Sherpas are perfectly capable of organising and doing things their own way. All we are is the go-between, between the New Zealand Government and the Sherpas.’
In Peter’s view, however, New Zealand has a lot to offer, not least because of the half-century of experience the country has in providing practical assistance in Nepal. ‘You’ve got the high-altitude physiological research, the first schools and hospitals, the forestry—all this expertise coming, much of it from this country. The Department of Conservation joined forces with Nepal to set up the Mt Everest National Park, and that was something Dad was very involved with. So New Zealand has been involved in the Mt Everest bit of Nepal for 60 years and we should maintain that involvement. There are a lot of opportunities for us to continue our work in health and education.’
Ed didn’t cope well with criticism or being challenged, and he didn’t cope well with the disagreements within the Trust. They might appear to have washed over him, but he clearly knew what was going on because he prevented Tom Scott from getting drawn into it. Scott recalls: ‘June Hillary said, “Tom and Averil should join the Himalayan Trust.” ’ Ed said, “Oh there’s no need for them to do that.” He virtually told Averil and I not to get involved. He knew what a mess it was turning into.’
As he got older, Ed’s ability to cope with being challenged grew less and less, effectively pre-empting any criticism. ‘You learned not to say stuff,’ says Hilary Carlisle. ‘I am in strategic planning and governance. I had a lot to contribute to the Himalayan Trust which was about modernising it, but Ed didn’t have the energy for it. I think Ed and his friend Zeke [O’Connor, president of the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation of Canada] got worried about the ongoing program of the Himalayan Trust and what would happen. He got more and more concerned about how he would continue it. He couldn’t cope with that change, so in a way it was easier not to change.’
Ed never stopped working as hard as he could for the Trust but, as he got older, the strain began to show. ‘It was a big effort to do the fundraising,’ says Carlisle. ‘He couldn’t have done that without June. He would spend a week to two weeks doing the accounts, manually of course. And then in the Trust meetings people would challenge the numbers and Ed would get upset. June didn’t like seeing him upset, so she would try and manage the situation. It [was as though] that stuff wouldn’t get discussed because he would get upset. He had hearing aids. He could cope a bit in a group, but for a three- or four-hour meeting it is really tiring if you have people speaking in all directions. June really looked for ways to reduce his stress.’
As time went by, it might have been expected the Trust would get on with its work free of family tensions. But the 2011 ABC-TV’s Foreign Correspondent program contained criticism of June for something that had occurred back in 2004. The program focused on an occasion three years after Ed’s death, when Peter and June attended the 50th anniversary celebrations for Khumjung School. It included an interview with Jim Strang, who had run advanced teacher training for the Trust in Nepal from 1997. But June had felt that enough was enough and in 2004 Strang’s funding had been turned off.
‘We did it for six years . . . four years . . . I can’t remember,’ said June. ‘They felt that was good enough. It was the same with the forestry—we did that for a certain time. I think that’s the way to do aid, really.’
‘This [decision] is incredible,’ said Peter on the program. ‘We’ve got this remarkable person, a team of teachers, a great need.’
The depth of the conflict is apparent, not only from what was said onscreen. When Peter and June are seated for one of the ceremonies, they are only centimetres apart; yet there is no eye contact, not a word exchanged. Two adults—a man and his father’s widow; a woman and her late husband’s only son—cannot bear any contact. Peter and June live in adjoining, upper-crust Auckland suburbs and have travelled thousands of kilometres from there t
o get here, yet it would seem each pretends the other does not exist. It was during this visit, June said later, that she decided to step down from the Trust.
ABC reporter Eric Campbell put into words what many in his audience would have been thinking. ‘It’s fairly obvious today there is something of a rift between you and Peter Hillary,’ Campbell suggested.
‘I don’t want to discuss that,’ answered June. ‘No. Peter Hillary has created a rift between him and me.’
‘I think up there with that ABC documentary,’ says Peter, ‘I know it was dawning on June she had to do something and she has. She resigned. But when you think about it, she was at the helm for a short time. She turned 80—I think she made a good decision.’
Jim Strang’s teacher-training program was almost immediately picked up by the Australian Himalayan Foundation in 2005 and expanded over the following two years. It now involves almost 300 schools. The New Zealand Trust still resources schools, but doesn’t conduct training.
In a telling contrast to June’s view of ‘the way to do aid’, Peter led Eric Campbell’s cameras away from Khumjung to a nearby town—just a short way from one of the trekking hot spots, but far enough from the beaten track for it not to benefit from tourist money and not to be as favoured by the Himalayan Trust as other areas. The poverty is extreme, especially by comparison to the area around Khumjung. ‘A lot of the challenges people had in Europe centuries ago are their challenges,’ Peter says.
In 2003 the New Zealand Government set up a new Annual Funding Arrangement with the Himalayan Trust. In 2007, the year before Ed died, New Zealand Aid conducted a review of the Trust. For all the fretting about the Trust’s attitude to professional accounting rather than Ed’s old-fashioned approach, the organisation emerged relatively unscathed from an inspection. The review found that:
One of the main strengths of the work of the Trust is that it has focused on helping people to help themselves, rather than importing ready-made solutions. The Trust occupies a position of influence in Solu Khumbu and has a great opportunity, and a certain responsibility, to accomplish all it can, to the highest possible standards, while continuing to leave the development agenda in the hands of the people of Solu Khumbu.
The report identified as key issues that ‘Solu Khumbu’s fragile environment is under increasing stress due to growth in tourism’ and ‘The Trust faces the challenge of finding and developing a new generation of leaders for both fundraising and project implementation.’
The question of leadership would certainly be a focus of interest in the next few years.
Things came to a climax following certain events that occurred after Ed’s death. In its 2011 newsletter the Trust noted the celebrations of its 50th anniversary and recorded its international achievements for the year. Included was this anodyne paragraph:
After the celebration of 50 years’ work of the Himalayan Trust Senior Founding Members of the Himalayan Trust New Zealand, Lady June Hillary, Jim Wilson, Murray Jones, Douglas Page, David Hayman and Rebecca Hayman resigned and the responsibilities passed on to the Chairman Dr John Heydon, Diane McKinnon, Secretary Dr Kobi Keralus, treasurer Sarah Hillary and Dr Mike Gill and the new members of New Zealand Himalayan Trust Council is expected to increase in near future with amendment of Himalayan Trust New Zealand Constitution [sic].
The Trust issued a statement at the time of these resignations but it couldn’t seem to decide how it felt about June and her allies falling on their swords:
Whilst all of those who have stepped down have made a hugely valuable contribution, over long periods of time, to the work of the Himalayan Trust Board, there is great significance in Lady June and Jim [Wilson] each ending their long-standing membership of the Council. Both Lady June and
Jim were foundation members of the Council, when the Himalayan Trust Board was established in September 1966, and each has had an unbroken chain of involvement in the work of the Himalayan Trust Board since that date. Murray Jones has also had a very long association with the Himalayan Trust Board.
But the move came as no real surprise to those close to the main players. ‘June and the other trustees could see the writing on the wall,’ says Graeme Dingle. ‘There was no future. The trust had to be reinvented and to do that it needed some modern ideas.’
The two camps had become irreversibly entrenched in their own positions. There was no Ed around, whose feelings both sides wanted to spare, and inevitably blood would be spilt. Some family members had tried to bridge the gap between the two sides, but the distance was too great.
‘The whole thing is very, very sad’, says Murray Jones, who is still of the opinion that Ed wanted June to head the Trust. ‘What he wanted to happen in the Himalayan Trust was laid out, but other people thought they knew better and wouldn’t accept it. Like many people in the Himalayan Trust, I have been torn to pieces because of my loyalties to Ed and I don’t want any more to do with it.’
By choosing not to speak publicly, June has passed up a chance to defend herself. She has obviously been pained by much that has happened, not just since Ed’s death but in the years leading up to it. Now, she does not even have the consolation of her husband’s presence to make her plight more tolerable. She has left her defence to others in her ‘camp’; but they, like her, have little stomach for what seems to be a tawdry epilogue to a life of devotion and service.
‘It wasn’t just about the Himalayan Trust,’ says Jones. ‘It goes way, way back. I am well aware of the problems. I find it quite disturbing to see the people who have put so much into the Himalayan Trust, like June, unfairly maligned. But she can’t really defend herself. If she says anything, it makes the spat even worse and sometimes you have to rise above it. But, it’s torn us all apart and we really want nothing to do with the Trust anymore. Ed would be so upset as to what’s happened. I was there when Ed said he wanted June to carry on with his work, but other people couldn’t accept that.’
Several months after the resignations, Sarah was adamant the Trust was in good hands. ‘June and her family resigned but we are an interim committee council. We were in the middle of updating our new constitution anyway before they resigned. We expect a new constitution completed by next year, then we can start the process of electing new council members.’ Sarah suggests the new system will be both more flexible and more secure, lessening the possibility of someone getting and keeping a stranglehold: ‘Anyone can be voted on. The chairman will be elected for the year—there will be no permanent positions.’
The Trust is important to Sarah, she says, ‘Because our parents put so much work into it and because we think it has been very successful; but there is still a lot more work to be done.’
June’s move was reported as far afield as the UK, where the Guardian newspaper reported the reaction of Mary Lowe—wife of George Lowe and secretary to the Himalayan Trust UK. ‘We can’t hide the fact that Peter and June never got on,’ Mary told the Guardian. ‘They’re both tough characters. June’s been working for the Himalayan Trust for fifty years. It’s just the right moment for her. It’s a new start.’
CHAPTER 15
STORY APPROVAL
Ed was given credit for many exceptional qualities in his lifetime. Not least of them—though among the least commented on—was his skilful use of the media to achieve his ends. And because the ascent of Everest occurred just before television was about to take hold of the world, Ed and the medium developed alongside each other.
The camera, as we have seen, was crucial to proving that the ascent had occurred. If there had been no camera with Ed and Tenzing, the world would have had to take their word for it. Given how much trouble some people had accepting their achievement, even with photographic evidence, the difficulties of convincing them without it can only be imagined.
They took some convincing themselves. It’s been observed that, from the late 20th century on, something only exists if it is reported in the media, and it seems Ed was no exception, as he explained to the US Academy
of Achievement: ‘We did have a little radio at base camp, and somebody tuned into the BBC in London and the announcer was just describing the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and then he broke into the coronation and said, “We have great pleasure in announcing that the British Everest expedition has finally reached the summit of Mt Everest.” And then, almost for the first time, I felt, “My God! We’ve climbed the thing and we’ve had authoritative support from the BBC in London that we’ve done it!” ’
No one lasts long in the media unless they can provide a good soundbite, and Ed got off to a great start with ‘Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.’ It was easily the equal of ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ in memorability, if not in philosophical depth. But it was the very laconic Kiwi shoulder-shrug of it that charmed the world (even if it did not charm Ed’s mother, Gertrude—she was appalled at her son’s vulgarity and made her feelings known about it). And then there was the tantalising ambiguity of ‘we’—was that the Hunt team, or was it Ed and Tenzing?
There were no cellphones in 1953, and the expedition did not have its own radio. James Morris, the UK Times correspondent attached to the team, realised that the announcement could be made to coincide with the coronation if he acted quickly enough. He raced down from the camp to the nearest radio, at an army post at Namche Bazaar, to get the news to London.
On 1 June, The Times received Morris’s coded message: ‘Snow conditions bad hence expedition abandoned advance base on 29th and awaiting improvement being all well.’ In a gesture that can only make contemporary journalists nostalgic, they shared it with other media, and people everywhere awoke to read on the front page of their papers that Britons had beaten the world’s mightiest mountain.
Ed bore the inevitable confusions in reporting with good grace. The Daily Mail headline was typical: ‘The Crowning Glory—Everest Conquered. Edward Hillary plants the Queen’s flag on the top of the world’. Ed didn’t mind the lack of any reference to his nationality. He identified happily as a British subject then—though he was a New Zealand citizen. But he did resent being called ‘Edward’.