The dark shadow over Sir Edmund's life

Nepal has been a triumph for Sir Edmund Hillary but it has had its price - his wife and daughter were killed there, and his son was long forced to live in the shadow of his famous father.

Wife Louise and their 16-year-old daughter Belinda, willing participants in Sir Ed's dream, died in 1975.

Friend Peter Mulgrew, whose widow June became Sir Ed's wife, was nearly killed in Nepal and then there is the sad story of Hillary and his son Peter.

In a country as small as New Zealand, being the child of someone famous has always been a heavy burden; for Peter, born 19 months after his dad's achievement, it was crushing.

A young and unknown Ed Hillary met Louise through her father, the then president of the New Zealand Alpine Club. A talented violinist, she left New Zealand to study at the Sydney Conservatorium. On his way to Everest Hillary called by Sydney to see her.

Then on May 29, 1953, he and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the Everest summit and the two were global heroes.

Coming home he called back at Sydney and proposed to Louise. They married in Auckland, with a ceremonial arch provided by icepicks.

Three children followed: Peter, Sarah and Belinda.

Sarah Hillary, who has escaped the public attention, is an art conservator, and in Metro magazine she told of a childhood of adventuring and recalling her father's strength.

"He could lift anything and often ended up lugging the majority of the gear and food required for family tramping trips."

Louise Hillary quickly embraced his work for Nepal, despite an almost pathological fear of flying.

In 1975 Hillary's Himalayan Trust was involved in one of its biggest aid projects, a hospital at Phaphlu. Ed's brother Rex was there, as was Sir Ed. He was to be joined by Louise and Belinda. At Kathmandu the two met June Mulgrew and her daughter Robyn, who were returning from the mountains for New Zealand.

The same aircraft that had taken them to Kathmandu, a single-engine Platus, was to be used to fly Louise and Belinda to Phaphlu.

On March 31, 1975, New Zealand pilot Peter Shand took off, unaware that a securing pin on one of the wing flaps was still in place. The aircraft plunged into the ground, killing all five aboard.

Ed flew to the scene.

"From the large circle of local people I could tell where the crash was," he wrote in a book later. "They parted to let me through and there they were - the battered remains of the two people I loved most in the world."

In 1961 Ed and Peter Mulgrew had been part of an assault on Makalu. Hillary had a stroke and was taken down the mountain as the expedition pushed on. Near the summit Mulgrew suffered a severe bout of altitude sickness and frostbite and nearly died. He lost both legs and much of his character in the drama.

On November 29, 1979, Mulgrew was a commentator on an Air New Zealand flight over Antarctica. It flew into the side of Mount Erebus, killing all 257 aboard.

When Prime Minister David Lange in 1985 appointed Hillary New Zealand's envoy to India, June went along as the social secretary.

After four years they came home, to their separate homes.

"Even though June was only a mile away, it seemed a rather lonely existence. It was our children who solved the problem for us. "

They married.

In 1990 Peter Hillary became the 279th person behind his father to scale Everest. He was with fellow countryman Rob Hall who, in 1996, was to die just below the summit - one of nine to die in a single storm.

Father and son spoke to each other by phone from the peak; the conversation, awkward and embarrassing, was carried live on radio. Ed later said it was the longest chat he had had with his son for years.

For television Peter Hillary was again on the peak this year and phoned his seeming impassive father. Peter broke down.

Peter Hillary had led a Himalayan traverse between 1979 and 1984 that was to cost the lives of five people.

His father said his son was always trying to set up things that were extremely difficult: "He has always been impatient and can be almost aggressive in his attitude."

- © Fairfax NZ News