He stood on top of the world - literally.
But Sir Edmund Hillary never saw himself as extraordinary.
Born on July 20, 1919, in the quiet town of Tuakau, south of Auckland, New Zealand, Edmund was the lanky, shy son of a beekeeper and a schoolteacher. He spent his childhood roaming the countryside, more at ease with nature than with people - a dreamer with big feet and bigger hopes.
And yet, he would go on to become one of the most iconic figures of the 20th century. Not just for being the first confirmed man to summit Mount Everest alongside Tenzing Norgay, but for the grace, grit, and humility with which he carried that weighty title: hero.
“I have had much good fortune, a fair amount of success and a share of sorrow, too,” he once said. “Ever since I reached the summit of Everest … the media have classified me as a hero, but I have always recognised myself as being a person of modest abilities. My achievements have resulted from a goodly share of imagination and plenty of energy.”
In an age obsessed with ego and spectacle, Hillary’s story reminds us that true greatness often comes quietly - through courage, compassion, and the steady climb of a life lived with purpose.
His 1953 ascent of Mount Everest — the highest point on Earth — made headlines around the globe. Alongside Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, Hillary stood quite literally on top of the world, and by the next morning, his name was known in every corner of it.
Fame, however, did not slow him down. He went on to lead the daring Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1957–58, becoming the first to drive overland to the South Pole since Scott. In 1977, he tackled the sacred waters of India in an audacious jet-boat journey up the Ganges. He wrote books, gave lectures, and fronted documentaries — not as a polished performer, but as a man with stories worth telling.
Yet it was his work in the Himalayas that perhaps best revealed the measure of the man. Beginning in the 1960s, Hillary dedicated himself to the welfare of the Sherpa people who had helped him reach Everest’s summit. Through the Himalayan Trust, he raised funds and oversaw the building of dozens of schools, clinics, bridges and airstrips in some of the most remote regions on Earth.
He also served with quiet distinction as New Zealand’s High Commissioner to India and Nepal in the 1980s, a role that deepened his bond with the region he loved so deeply.
Through triumph and personal tragedy — including the loss of his wife and daughter in a plane crash — Hillary remained steady, humble, and kind. The boy from Tuakau, who once carried honey and dreams on his back, became not just the conqueror of mountains, but a builder of futures.
In the end, Sir Ed didn’t just reach great heights — he helped others rise with him.
Hillary’s early life didn’t mark him out as a future global icon. He was a quiet, gangly boy who preferred books to people, and his academic performance at Tuakau Primary and Auckland Grammar was, by most accounts, unremarkable. But long train rides to and from school sparked a lifelong love of reading — particularly tales of adventure and exploration. The seeds of something greater had been planted.
A school trip to Mount Ruapehu would change everything. There, for the first time, Edmund encountered snow, ice, and the raw majesty of alpine country. He was hooked.
He briefly enrolled at Auckland University College to study mathematics and science, but his heart was never in the lecture halls. He much preferred tramping in the bush and clambering across ridgelines to poring over textbooks. After two years, he left university to join his brother Rex and help his father with the family bee-keeping business — a job that gave him the flexibility to train in the mountains during the off-season.
By 1939, he had climbed his first real peak — Mt Ollivier, near Aoraki/Mount Cook — and joined the New Zealand Alpine Club, dedicating himself seriously to the craft of mountaineering.
Around this time, the Hillary family became involved with Herbert Sutcliffe’s Radiant Living movement — a blend of liberal Christianity and holistic health. Though Edmund would later drift away from the philosophy, it gave him two things that stayed with him for life: confidence in public speaking, and a wider intellectual curiosity about the world and humanity’s place in it.
Sutcliffe also promoted pacifism, a view that resonated deeply in the Hillary household. When the Second World War broke out, beekeeping was classified a reserved occupation, exempting Edmund from military service. His brother Rex, more committed to the cause, spent four years in detention as a conscientious objector.
But Edmund wrestled with the issue. Eventually, he persuaded his father to let him serve. In 1944, he joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force — trading honeycomb for Hurricanes and embarking on a new kind of challenge.
Edmund Hillary, photographed at Delta Camp, near Blenheim, during his Second World War service with the Royal New Zealand Air Force
Hillary’s wartime service took him far from the mountains he loved. As a navigator in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, he flew aboard Catalina flying boats across the vast Pacific, stationed in Fiji and the Solomon Islands. The war taught him discipline, endurance, and calm under pressure — qualities that would later prove essential on ice and rock. But his military career ended suddenly when a motorboat explosion left him badly burned. His long recovery would bring him home — and back to the mountains.
Convalescing in the Southern Alps, Hillary met Harry Ayres, one of New Zealand’s finest climbers, who would become his mentor and help shape his raw enthusiasm into disciplined skill.
In 1948, Hillary made his first ascent of Aoraki/Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak. Not long after, he took part in a harrowing five-day rescue across the Main Divide, helping carry an injured climber through snow and rugged terrain to safety — a feat of endurance that earned him quiet respect among mountaineers.
Travel took him abroad in 1949, accompanying his parents to England for his sister June’s wedding. He found time to scale the Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps — a taste of higher altitudes to come. In 1951, he joined a New Zealand expedition to the Garhwal Himalaya in northern India, successfully summiting five peaks over 6,000 metres. That achievement earned him a coveted place on Eric Shipton’s British Everest Reconnaissance Expedition.
Proving his mettle alongside fellow Kiwi Earle Riddiford, and later George Lowe, Hillary joined the 1952 British Cho Oyu expedition — a vital testing ground for what lay ahead.
Then came the call that would change his life.
In 1953, Hillary and Lowe were invited to join John Hunt’s full-scale British Everest Expedition. It was a meticulously planned, high-stakes attempt to conquer the world’s highest peak.
On 29 May 1953 — just four days before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II — Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay stood together on the summit of Mount Everest. Cold, breathless, and elated, they had reached the roof of the world.
The beekeeper from Tuakau and the mountain man from Khumbu had done what no one else had. And in that moment, they became legends.
The Everest triumph might have satisfied a lesser man. But for Hillary, the summit was not an ending — it was the beginning of a life spent pushing boundaries.
In 1957, he took on another frozen frontier. As leader of the New Zealand team in the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Hillary was tasked with establishing Scott Base on the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf — a vital support post for British explorer Vivian Fuchs’s planned crossing of the continent.
Once the base was established, the New Zealanders set off in October 1957 in a convoy of modified Ferguson farm tractors — an unlikely sight in the harsh Antarctic wilderness — to lay supply depots for the main expedition. But then something unexpected happened.
Disregarding the cautious directives of the British Ross Sea Committee, Hillary made a bold call.
They would push on.
“Hell-bent for the Pole — God willing and crevasses permitting.”
And push they did. On 4 January 1958, Hillary and his team rolled into history, becoming the first people to reach the South Pole overland since Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed attempt in 1912.
It was a triumph of determination, improvisation, and sheer audacity — but not without controversy. Critics claimed Hillary had overshadowed the expedition’s scientific mission with a dash for glory. Hillary, typically, shrugged off the fuss.
He hadn't done it for fame. He’d done it because the Pole was there — and because someone had to go.
By the mid-1980s, Sir Edmund Hillary had already scaled the world's highest mountain and reached the South Pole. But in 1985, he added a final compass point to his resume of extremes: flying with astronaut Neil Armstrong to the North Pole. With that journey, Hillary became the first person in history to stand at both poles and the summit of Everest — a trifecta of earthly extremes that no one else had achieved.
His accomplishments earned him global recognition. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II shortly after Everest, and later appointed to the Order of the Garter — the highest knighthood in the British honours system. He was also awarded the Polar Medal, and back home in New Zealand, he received the Order of New Zealand, the country’s highest civilian honour.
But behind the public accolades lay a more private, painful story.
In 1953, shortly after the Everest ascent, Hillary married Louise Mary Rose. Together they had three children: Peter, Sarah, and Belinda. For decades, the family was at the heart of his world — especially as Hillary spent increasing time in Nepal, building schools, hospitals, and bridges for the Sherpa people through the Himalayan Trust.
Then, tragedy struck.
On March 31, 1975, Louise and their youngest daughter, Belinda, were killed in a plane crash near Kathmandu while en route to join him. The loss devastated Hillary. For years, he retreated from public life, weighed down by grief.
But even in sorrow, he found a way to turn outward once more.
In 1977, still carrying the ache of his loss, he led one of his most spiritually symbolic expeditions: Ocean to Sky. Traveling with his son Peter and fellow New Zealanders including Graeme Dingle, the team navigated the sacred Ganges River by jet boat — battling rapids, altitude, and emotion as they journeyed from the Bay of Bengal to the river’s Himalayan source. It was part adventure, part healing — a physical and symbolic ascent from despair back toward light.
And don't worry, there is an article coming up about the marvellous jet boat.
Tragedy struck again in 1979 when Peter Mulgrew — a close friend and trusted member of Hillary’s expedition team — was killed in the Air New Zealand Flight 901 disaster. The sightseeing flight crashed into Antarctica’s Mount Erebus, claiming all 257 lives on board. The loss hit deeply, compounding the grief of Hillary’s earlier family tragedy.
Peter’s widow, June Mulgrew, had long been close to the Hillary family. In time, sorrow gave way to companionship, and in 1989, Edmund and June were married. Theirs was a partnership marked by deep mutual understanding — forged not in the flush of youth but in the crucible of shared loss. June became Hillary’s steadfast companion, supporting his public engagements and humanitarian work with quiet strength and grace.
And that work — particularly in Nepal — became the central legacy of Hillary’s post-Everest life.
In 1960, deeply moved by the poverty and isolation of the Sherpa people who had helped him reach the summit, Hillary founded the Himalayan Trust. More than any medal or mountain, this was his enduring gift.
With characteristic practicality and resolve, he set about building what the region needed most: schools, hospitals, bridges, airstrips, and water pipelines. The Trust officially launched in 1964, and over the next three decades, it became a model of grassroots international aid. With the help of hundreds of volunteers from New Zealand and beyond, Hillary’s vision transformed dozens of villages.
The results were tangible: over a dozen schools, two hospitals, two airfields, countless clinics, repaired monasteries, and restored pathways. The work was not just infrastructure — it was dignity.
Among the Sherpa, Hillary became known simply as Burra Sahib — "big in heart."
For them, he was not just the man who stood atop Everest. He was the man who came back.
Sir Edmund Hillary passed away on January 11, 2008, aged 88. Tributes poured in from around the world, but perhaps none captured him better than his own quiet reflection on his 85th birthday: “What a fortunate person I have been!”
In a world often dazzled by ego and noise, Hillary’s legacy endures not just because he reached great heights, but because he brought others with him. Whether hauling an injured climber across the Southern Alps, building a school in a Himalayan village, or simply putting one foot in front of the other through snow, grief, and time — he did it all with humility, service, and quiet courage.
The shy boy from Tuakau became a man who changed the world — and never made a fuss about it.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/edmund-hillary
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6h1/hillary-edmund-percival
