Number wise, New Zealanders are among the smallest collection of people on earth. But historically, we've changed the world with our ideas. Over the next few weeks in Independent Women we will be looking at female Kiwis who should be a source of inspiration for us all. These heroes are proudly brought to you by THE NEW ZEALAND EDGE, a website dedicated to a new way of thinking about our identity, our people, our stories, our achievements and our place in the world.
In some ways I believe I epitomise the average New Zealander: I have modest abilities, I combine these with a good deal of determination, and I rather like to succeed." These typically modest words were uttered by the most famous living New Zealander – a sporting and adventure hero, who scaled heights and reached places where no human being had gone before.
He conquered Mount Everest and the South Pole and captured a world’s imagination. Yet where others would have been content to admire the view, look down and bask in the sheer individuality of achievement, for Sir Edmund Hillary it was only the beginning of a lifetime of service to others.
The names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because, yes, the feat was electrifying and human, partly because they fitted the mould as ‘heroic men’, and because they represented compellingly the spirit of their times. The beekeeper and the Sherpa, one from a remote former colony of the Crown on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the other from the edge of the heavens. They affirmed the power of humble determination and won one for the underdogs.
Edmund Percival Hillary was born in Auckland in 1919. His father Percival was a strict disciplinarian who had been wounded in the face at Gallipoli and was described as "rigidly principled" by Edmund: Percival quit his job as editor of the Tuakau District News after disagreeing with the board of directors. He then took up his hobby full-time, working as a beekeeper.
The young Edmund went to Auckland Grammar School. It took over two hours each way to get there from Tuakau, so he filled the time by reading. He was younger and smaller than most of his class, and not socially adept. In 1953, when he wanted to ask his future wife Louise to marry him, he was so shy that his future mother-in-law asked her on his behalf.)
Surprisingly, for someone who would later become known as New Zealand’s most famous adventurer, he also felt inferior at sport, awkward and uncoordinated. He took refuge in reading and dreaming of a life filled with adventure. It was when he was sixteen, during a school trip to Mount Ruapehu, that his interest in mountaineering began. He was fascinated by the snow which, as a born and bred Aucklander, he had never seen before. He was also discovering that, while he was not a natural athlete, his gangly, taunt frame was physically strong and had higher levels of endurance than many of the friends he went tramping with.
By World War II, Hillary, who had followed in his father’s footsteps as a beekeeper, was seriously involved in climbing. He served in the New Zealand Air Force for two years as a navigator, but was discharged after an accident. By this stage a dream had also been born.
After the war, Hillary spent as much time preparing for Everest as he could. He climbed the Southern Alps in summer and winter, to practice both rock climbing and ice pick work, and also took up wrestling. In 1951 Hillary made his first trip to the Himalayas and the following year joined a British Everest Committee training team.
Everest is a very big mountain to ignore, 29,028 feet high to be exact. Known and revered as Chomolungma to its people. A mountain – unreachable, fearless, deadly - that had defeated 15 previous expeditions. On its slopes many of the worlds strongest climbers had perished. The North Pole had been reached in 1909; the South Pole in 1911. But Everest, often described as the Third Pole, had defied all man’s attempts – up until Hillary and Tenzing, reaching the summit had come to seem beyond mere mortals.
Hillary joined a British expedition to climb Everest in 1953, led by British mountaineer John Hunt and 400 others. It was in May, and the expedition was trying to stay ahead of the monsoon snows. Different climbers in the expedition would be chosen to make the assault on Everest. After an earlier pair had to retire 300 feet short of the summit, Hillary and a Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, recognised as the strongest and fittest in the team, were chosen to try the ascent.
After an uncomfortable night, they left the last camp at South Col in the freezing chill dawn of May 29th 1953. Five hours later, at 11:30am, Hillary, who was leading the climb at this point, stepped onto the summit.
"...I then realised that the ridge ahead, instead of still monotonously rising, now dropped sharply away, and far below I could see the North Col and the Rongbuk Glacier. I looked upwards to see a narow snow ridge running up to a snowy summit. A few more whacks of the ice-axe in the firm snow, and we stood on the top."
Then Tenzing stepped up and Hillary took a photograph of him. Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood literally on top of the world. It didn't enter his head to have his photograph taken. "As far as I knew, he [Tenzing] had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how".
He looked around for signs of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, who had gone to the mountain 30 years before and who, some people believe, had reached the summit. Hillary found no signs. Tenzing dug holes for food, small gifts to the gods. Having paid their respects to the highest mountain in the world, they then urinated on it.
Hillary heralded the event with the laconic style that made him a New Zealand archetype. Returning from the summit, he greeted a fellow New Zealand member of the expedition George Lowe, with the iconic words: "Well George, we’ve knocked the bastard off."
The image of the tall, imposing New Zealander, catapulted Hillary into the status of media hero, both then and over the intervening half century. Yet Hillary remained modest about the whole event, seeing it as a triumph of a whole mountaineering team, rather than just one man.
Number wise, New Zealanders are among the smallest collection of people on earth. But historically, we've changed the world with our ideas. Over the next few weeks in Independent Women we will be looking at female Kiwis who should be a source of inspiration for us all. These heroes are proudly brought to you by THE NEW ZEALAND EDGE, a website dedicated to a new way of thinking about our identity, our people, our stories, our achievements and our place in the world. 
In some ways I believe I epitomise the average New Zealander: I have modest abilities, I combine these with a good deal of determination, and I rather like to succeed." These typically modest words were uttered by the most famous living New Zealander – a sporting and adventure hero, who scaled heights and reached places where no human being had gone before.