State funeral for Everest hero Hillary

Edmund Hillary, the man who conquered Mount Everest, will be given a state funeral, the New Zealand government said today.

The 88-year-old, who died of a heart attack yesterday, shot to fame when he scaled the world’s highest mountain along with Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

After returning from the summit, the famously matter-of-fact climber greeted a fellow expedition member with the words: “Well, George, we’ve knocked the bastard off.”

Hillary's paternal grandmother came from Ireland.

Family spokesman Mark Sainsbury said the New Zealand government’s offer of a state funeral had been accepted, but a date would not be set until family members had returned from overseas. The funeral will be broadcast on television.

Flags at the Scott Base in Antarctica and the New Zealand parliament in Wellington were being flown at half mast as a mark of respect.

Helen Clark, New Zealand’s prime minister, said Hillary, who preferred to be called “Ed”, was the best-known New Zealander to have lived.

“Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In reality, he was a colossus.

“He was an heroic figure who not only ’knocked off’ Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity,” she said.

“Most of all he was a quintessential Kiwi. He was ours – from his craggy appearance and laconic style to his directness and honesty.”

After climbing the 8,850m peak of Everest, Hillary spent much of his life supporting humanitarian work among the Sherpas and led expeditions to the South Pole and the source of the Yangtze River.

Step-daughter Suzie told the New Zealand Herald that he was in “high spirits” before his death at Auckland City Hospital at 9am local time.

George Band, at 24 the youngest member of the Everest expedition in 1953, told BBC Radio Five Live: “He was a very tough, lean, six-footer, a very determined person, and he and George Lowe were the two New Zealand members of our party, our team of 14 led by John Hunt….When he wasn’t rushing up and down the icefall he liked to lie in what we called the ’Everest position’, which was just lying flat out, relaxing on your bed.”

Photographer Greg Gregory, who accompanied Hillary on the expedition, described him as a “top character”.

Speaking from Australia, 90-year-old Mr Gregory said: “He was a member of the team like everybody else and nobody knew until quite late on, when John Hunt…decided who was going up there, that he would be the first.”

Hillary wrote of his and Tenzing’s final push to the roof of the world in 1953: “Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest.”

Ever modest, he said one of his dominant feelings at the summit was “surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest”.

“I just didn’t believe it.”

British adventurer and environmentalist Pen Hadow said Hillary's death “closes one of the great chapters of planetary exploration”.

Actor and adventurer Brian Blessed, who attempted to scale Everest three times, described Hillary as a “kind of titan”.

He told BBC News 24: “Hillary was a kind of titan, a man of extraordinary strength, great constitution, and brilliant that it should be a Sherpa alongside him, Tenzing, much loved by people.

“He has built bridges and schools, you know, gone over there (Nepal) and done all this, and he’s a legend there, with his great love for the Nepalese people and helping them, and helping the government, I mean it’s absolutely astronomical.”

It was not until the publication in 1999 of his book 'View From The Summit' that Hillary broke his silence on whether he or Tenzing was the first to the top of Everest.

“We drew closer together as Tenzing brought in the slack on the rope,” he wrote. “I continued cutting a line of steps upwards. Next moment I had moved on to a flattish exposed area of snow with nothing by space in every direction.

“Tenzing quickly joined me and we looked round in wonder. To our immense satisfaction we realised we had reached the top of the world.”

Before the Sherpa’s death in 1986, Hillary consistently refused to say he was first, insisting that he and Tenzing had climbed to the top as a team.

The New Zealand mountaineer and adventurer Graeme Dingle, a long-time friend of Hillary's, told the New Zealand Herald he and his wife had managed to see him shortly before Christmas.

“He was pretty crook but he said: ’How’s your daughter?’ We held our little dog up and his eyes just lit up,” he said.

“He was restless, he was talented, he didn’t give up easily – he was incredibly determined. He would have said it wasn’t the quickness of wit or the quickness of body but the business of being dogged. I think that’s the measure of greatness.”

The New Zealander’s commitment to Nepal took him back to the mountainous country more than 120 times and his son Peter described his work there as his “duty” to the people who had helped him.

But tragedy struck on one visit to Nepal in 1975, when his wife Louise and daughter Belinda were killed in a plane crash.

Hillary is survived by his second wife June, whom he married in 1990, and his children Peter and Sarah.