by Michael Gill
In a way this is a lonely sort of an existence. I have a few strange dreams at times – like last night I dreamt the whole family had crashed in a plane at Singapore – I felt quite depressed for a while and decided if something like that really did happen that life would scarcely be worth living.
I hate the sound of a helicopter – I always think they’re bringing bad news.
In 1973 Louise published her third book, High Time, describing a month with Ed and the children in Nepal over the Christmas period 1971–72. They had been delayed briefly by the 13-day Indo-Pakistan War, during which Pakistan bombed Agra Airport and East Pakistan declared itself the independent new nation of Bangladesh.
The Solukhumbu development projects were now embedded in the lives of the Hillary family. Each year Ed was spending many weeks in Nepal, checking on building progress, talking to locals and government, listening for new ideas. But he was also spending six months of each year in Auckland and getting to know Peter, Sarah and Belinda – and Louise – more closely than had been possible in the frantic early years. Louise’s parents, Phyl and Jim Rose, owned an isolated block of steep land on Auckland’s wild west coast near Anawhata. They gave a part of it, perched on top of a 100-metre cliff, to Ed and Louise who built a small bach there. It became their tūrangawaewae, the Māori word for a place to stand, a spiritual home.
Fundraising was a constant commitment for both Ed and Louise, particularly in the US through World Book and Sears, but New Zealand was important too. Louise described the long hours put in by her, Ed and Max Pearl, and in High Time she showed on a map 34 completed projects, including 14 schools, one airstrip, one hospital with associated village clinics, six bridges, four water supplies, and two monastery repairs. By now Louise was visiting Nepal most years, as well as fundraising. A strikingly successful initiative was a bazaar in Auckland selling Nepali fabrics, carpets and handicraft, items largely unknown outside their own country. Stalls were set up in the city centre on a Sunday morning; the newspapers wrote headline stories. The result was a stampede, a sellout within two hours and a profit of $4400. In all, the New Zealand public donated $40,000 towards Ed’s next project, a hospital at Phaplu in Solu.
On the legal side, Louise’s father, Jim Rose, set up the Himalayan Trust as the vehicle for Ed’s aid work. In January 1972, a first official agreement was signed with the Government of Nepal. Headlines in the Kathmandu papers read, ‘HIS MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT AND THE HIMALAYAN TRUST REACH AGREEMENT’. ‘In some tangible way,’ Louise wrote, ‘we seemed to have been accepted fully into the great Nepalese brotherhood.’10
Ed’s first full autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, was released at the end of March 1975. The final three paragraphs portray a man whose life has been blessed:
If my life finished tomorrow I would have little cause for complaint – I have gathered a few successes, a handful of honours and more love and laughter than I probably deserve. In a sense my life has been strung together by a series of friendships – Harry Ayres, George Lowe, Peter Mulgrew, Mike Gill, Jim Wilson, Max Pearl, Mingma Tsering – and most of all Louise – the list goes on and on and I would have been nothing without them. I should be content I suppose. Yet, I look at myself and feel a vast dissatisfaction – there was so much more I could have done. And this is what really counts – not just achieving things … but the advantage you have taken of your opportunities and the opportunities you created.
Each of us has to discover his own path – of that I am sure. Some paths will be spectacular and others peaceful and quiet – who is to say which is the most important? For me the most rewarding moments have not always been the great moments – for what can surpass a tear on your departure, joy on your return, or a trusting hand in yours?
Most of all I am thankful for the tasks still left to do – for the adventures still lying ahead. I can see a mighty river to challenge; a hospital to build; a peaceful mountain valley with an unknown pass to cross; an untouched Himalayan summit and a shattered Southern glacier – yes, there is plenty left to do.11
– CHAPTER 27 –
A plane crash ends two lives and blights another
In 1974, with the Everest region having a school in each village, a hospital at Khunde, and an airstrip in the growing village of Lukla, Ed gave his full attention to the district of Solu. He had built a school and hostel in the attractive village of Junbesi on the trail to Kathmandu, and more recently had contributed to a high school in Salleri, administrative centre for the whole of Solukhumbu. Just north of Salleri was the wealthy little Sherpa village of Phaplu, where a neglected airstrip needed improvements.
One day Ed received an invitation to lunch at the home of Ang Kazi Lama, head of the wealthiest Sherpa family in Phaplu. The lavish scale of the banquet indicated that it would be the occasion for a very special request. Lengthening the airstrip was part of it, but more important was a petition to build a hospital in Phaplu on land the Lama family would donate. Ed looked south at the high school he had just built, west at the airstrip he would improve, east at a superb hospital site among pine forest, and north at the two magnificent peaks of Numbur and Karyolung filling the head of the valley. The invitation was irresistible.
Planning and fundraising were proceeding throughout 1974 when Ed’s imagination lit on the idea that the whole family could base themselves in Kathmandu during the building of the hospital in 1975. He always missed Louise when he was on his own in Nepal. So at the beginning of 1975 the house in Remuera Road was let out and another in Kathmandu rented for the year. Louise was soon proud of the abundance of veges and tropical flowers in her Nepali garden. The education of 16-year-old Belinda was a mix of Correspondence School from New Zealand; Nepali lessons, shared with Louise, from a Mrs Shresta; and attendance at a Kathmandu school. Sarah, age 18, was in Kathmandu before returning to Auckland University in March. Peter, age 20, having replicated his father’s two-year university career, planned a year in Nepal mixed with travel in India. Ed’s brother Rex was there to direct building of the new hospital throughout the year, as was mountaineer Murray Jones. Peter Mulgrew’s wife June, running her first commercial trek into Solukhumbu, was one of the early visitors to the new Hillary home abroad. Ed was regularly flying back and forth between Phaplu and Kathmandu as building progressed.
Louise wrote animated letters about her new life. There was the Coronation of King Birendra on 24 February:
At the airport huge jet after huge jet is landing bumpily on the unfamiliar strip. The whole valley is overrun with police and soldiers bristling with weapons and completely untrained … What a marathon the day itself was … Lunch with PM … Palace reception for 3000 people … Mrs. Marcos of the Philippines is the bad lady of the Coronation and brought a party of 45 when she was told to bring 11 … Dinner at British Embassy at 9.30pm … I had Kirin opposite me and he was drunk and his huge row of medals fell off … Charles is really nice, so were all the Royals …1
Dealing with servants and their problems was a new experience:
Had row with our bearer Surji who wanted 1000 RS advance to buy a radio!! I said No! and he got sulky and said why couldn’t I help him when I spent 15 RS an hour on lessons in Nepali and yet I still couldn’t speak it properly. I was very surprised and tried to leave the room with dignity …
Came back later to find Surji’s girlfriend up in the bedroom we’ve given to Belinda who seemed to think the girlfriend had come to stay. Pretty soon it became clear that she has eloped with Surji … Had a meeting to discuss Surji’s problems, which are colossal, as he already has a wife and two daughters … we have summoned the girlfriend’s parents …2
Then there were the numerous trips to the airport where a New Zealander, Peter Shand, had come on the scene a month earlier as a newly employed pilot with Royal Nepal Airlines. He had a reputation for being disorganised, as Louise’s encounters attest:
22 March … Went to Peter Shand’s for dinner. Nothing was ready and place a mess … a couple of odd young men and
an RNAC mechanic and two girls – one NZ and the other Nepalese. Peter showed us some lovely slides …
23 March. A very busy day – Ed in a frenzy – everything is starting to happen madly now … Jim Rose wanted us to sign our wills and get them witnessed by June. They were signed and witnessed at the airport with pilots wondering a bit …
24 March … Ed and co to airport today but were sent back because the pilot – Peter Shand – was lost … It was not a good day but finally they departed … I feel as though we are operating an airline.3
On 31 March Louise and Belinda were scheduled to make one of their regular flights in to Phaplu so that Ed could show them progress on the hospital site. Ed offered to fly back from Phaplu so as to accompany them, but on 28 March Louise sent him a message: ‘ALL IS GOING WELL. DON’T COME TO KATHMANDU.’
The flight was due to land in Phaplu at 8 a.m. Three hours later, Ed heard the chopping clatter of a helicopter, not the buzz of a plane. He had been uneasy about the flight’s late arrival, but now he knew that something unexpected had happened. A grim Liz Hawley stepped out of the chopper. The news could not have been worse. Louise and Belinda were dead, lying in the burnt wreckage of the plane which had crashed soon after takeoff.
Pilot Peter Shand had arrived late, and without a pause had taxied into the takeoff. Almost immediately after leaving the ground, he was asking permission to land. One of the plane’s ailerons remained fixed by a rod which should have been removed by ground staff; its presence would have been discovered if he had done pre-flight checks before take-off. Ailerons are used when banking into a turn. Without them, a plane is unflyable. Peter Shand got partway round a turn, but the plane slewed sideways into a sickening dive before bursting into flame in a paddy field beyond the north end of the runway.
At Phaplu a stunned Ed and Jim Rose climbed into the helicopter with Liz Hawley and flew back to Kathmandu. Ed told the pilot that he wanted to land at the crash site. Here he saw the burnt remains of his greatly loved wife and youngest daughter. He was told that it would be next to impossible to fly the bodies back to New Zealand for a funeral, so cremation was arranged on pyres at a Hindu non-caste site on the banks of the Bagmati River. The deaths, those burnt bodies, and the grief they evoked, were a descent into hell, a source of torment for years to come.
Ed wrote a letter to his friends five days later:
My dear and special friends,
It is now five days since Louise & Belinda died in the plane crash & I hope you will forgive me if I share some of my pain with you. When the Pilatus failed to arrive at Phaplu I had a terrible premonition of disaster & when a helicopter approached I knew that something dreadful had occurred. We landed beside what little remained of the crashed plane – hardly more than a mile from the Kathmandu runway – as the bodies were being gathered from the wreck. Thank God it must at least have been sudden & immediately over.
People have been wonderfully kind and good & Phyl & Jim Rose have been unbelievably calm & strong. We’ve had messages from Kings & Prime Ministers & tears from our Sherpas and Nepalese friends. I think you know how much Louise has meant to me & Belinda was so kind & joyous. My one wish has been to join them if I could find a way without bringing further pain & suffering to my friends.
The arrival of Sarah with Peter Mulgrew has been a great blessing. She is a dear girl and stronger in spirit than I believed possible. I will stick around as long as she feels she needs me. Peter is somewhere in India – we haven’t yet been able to locate him.
On Monday we go back into Phaplu for a while to start work going again on the hospital. Whatever else happens I feel the task must be finished. Sarah, Mingma & I will then walk up to Khumbu and cry a little with our friends.
What will happen then I don’t quite know. Life must go on, I suppose, and Sarah says she will come with me to London & the USA to help do the tasks I have promised to do. I only hope I have the courage to carry through what has to be done.
Sometime I must return to NZ to give Sarah & Peter a home again – poor substitute though it may be – but it may take a little time before I can face that. It is so easy to die but God knows if I’ll have the courage to go on living.
Love to you all. Your friendship has meant everything to Louise & me.
Ed.4
Peter Mulgrew had accompanied daughter Sarah from Auckland to Kathmandu, and Peter Hillary was tracked down in India. They joined Ed, Phyl and Jim in Kathmandu. Peter wrote:
… our little green car came bumping along the road. Sarah was driving. Phyl was in the passenger seat and Dad and Jim were in the back. The car stopped and the three remnants of the Hillary family reached for each other. We stood there on the road and wept. For me that meeting was the final affirmation of our loss.5
As Sarah was to lament later, the two family members who might have held the survivors together were the ones who had died.
For Ed, it was the beginning of four years of deep depression. More than in most marriages, Louise had been his other half, and now he blamed himself for her death. ‘I knew it was all my fault – Louise had hated flying in small planes, but I had ignored her fears. This feeling would hang over my head forever.’6 To many of his friends he was never the same person, even after emerging from the worst of his depression. Di McKinnon, a Khunde volunteer in 1966–68 wrote, ‘That was the beginning of the dark times when Louise and Belinda were killed. The joy went out of Ed. He carried on doing things, building Phaplu Hospital, but it wasn’t the way it had been before. He was never again the person we had known before 1975.’7
A few days after the cremations, Ed flew back into Phaplu – what else was there to do? Sarah and Peter were there, and Max Pearl flew in from Auckland in the role of long-time friend and doctor. As a writer, Ed found letters an easier vehicle for expressing his emotions than talking. When Max returned to work a couple of weeks later, Ed thanked him:
Dear Max, Your support has probably been far more valuable than you realize. I leaned on you rather heavily, but then I’ve been leaning on Louise for twenty years so it’s not too much of a change … Sarah this morning said ‘Dad, we still have a home you know and Phyl and Jim will be there.’8
By the beginning of May, the isolation of Phaplu was leaving too much empty time to think. Ed, Peter and Sarah packed their bags and embarked on a round-the-world trip to be with friends and family in Kathmandu, Delhi, Norwich, London and Chicago.
Norwich was the home of Ed’s sister June and her husband Jimmy Carlile, a GP in the city. Ed wrote to them after their visit there:
Dear June and Jimmy, I read the huge pile of letters awaiting me. The kids very much enjoyed their visit but I regret that we never had the opportunity to have a peaceful talk without them being present. Everyone is always so kind and restrained that one gets the feeling that Louise died a generation ago. There is no doubt that most that is worthwhile in me died with Louise and Belinda. Although you both in your own professions hear such protestations with monotonous regularity I do not think it would be wise to brush aside too casually my feelings in this respect. My first thirty years were a rather strange and unhappy period and Louise brought me contentment and joy that I believe few people are lucky enough to experience. Fond as I am of Peter and Sarah, there is no doubt that Belinda had a special place in my affections (she had the same vitality and happiness as her mother) and to see her shattered body in the wreck of the aircraft was pretty hard to take.
It’s strange how the kids can see pictures of Louise and Belinda and thoroughly enjoy them while to me it is still a stab in the heart. Poor Belinda – she had such ambitions to help the world and so much potential. She never knew that she was the most successful student at Diocesan in her year at School Certificate with five A’s and a B. I suppose that one must be thankful that in her 16 years she created far more joy and happiness than most people ever succeed in doing.
But in the end it all comes down to Louise who had become the hub around which my life revolved. I think we had bec
ome rather a good team – she was contributing more than I could to the social scene in New Zealand. Few people realised the importance of her enthusiasm for our Sherpa projects. Even my old comrade Mingma Tsering said at Kathmandu Airport, ‘Now the Burra Memsahib has gone, will you ever come back?’ I frankly don’t know.
Sorry to be writing this way but I feel the need to unload to someone now and then. Maybe I’ll dredge some motivation from somewhere – I certainly hope so. Sarah and Peter will have to work out their own futures somehow – they have reached that stage anyway. Sarah no doubt will carry on as before but Peter will find it harder without his mother to fall back on.
Thank you both for your patience and kindness.
Love, Ed.9
After the Sears visit to Chicago, which included a canoe trip down the Buffalo River during which Peter displayed his developing rockclimbing skills, the three of them returned to 278a Remuera Road. As Ed had feared, it was an empty shell echoing with memories.
Painfully too, Ed’s Nothing Venture, Nothing Win had been published at the end of March, and reviews were coming out within days of Louise’s death:
This is no classic tale of mountain adventure … It is rather an attempt to convey in everyman’s language the belief of one man that life should be more than a succession of spirit-deadening routines, and that the excitement and harmony that comes from contact with the earth’s wilderness areas is something that everyone should – and can – experience. This reader is left with the lasting impression that Edmund Hillary is, as a result of that experience, one of the sanest and perhaps happiest men he has come across in a long time.10
The pride and joy he took in his family come out time and again … The tragic death of his wife and daughter in Nepal last week will call on reserves of moral courage to match his outstanding physical bravery. No reader of this autobiography will doubt those reserves … an over-mastering competitiveness and tremendous physical energy … his very readable story may inspire others to opt out from the dreary treadmill of materialism and follow his star. Meanwhile we can only offer him condolences and thanks.11
