Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

Let it go! Please just let it go!!

It was 71 years, two months and 19 days ago by my reckoning – 26,013 days ago. So, can we just move on?

Okay, there was a Union Jack 8849m up the world’s highest peak on Friday, May 29 in 1953. But it wasn’t being fluttered by any smug, conquering Brit – it was a New Zealand flag, and it was hitched to an icepick held triumphantly aloft by a Sherpa mountaineer and photographed by a bloke with a chin like a snow plough, a goofy grin, and a funny hat.

AND … and a man of immense physical endurance, mental toughness, and technical skills – probably New Zealand’s greatest sportsman of any code. One Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, KG ONZ KBE, mountaineer, explorer and philanthropist. And all-round nice guy.

Sir Ed was the first to set foot on the roof of the world, to succeed where others had failed, and others had died. Sir Ed, a Kiwi – despite LIFE magazine at the time trying to spread the glory by constantly referring to him as British. And when Sir Ed made it up there, there was no discarded empty packet of pork scratchings, no used Earl Grey tea bags, no ‘George Herbert Leigh-Mallory was here’ etched into the rock. No ‘For King and country’ or ‘ha ha – beat you!’

We have the pics

AND – and it’s a big ‘and’ – we have the pics. We have the photographs. We have the evidence of those historic 15 minutes on the peak. Okay – Sir Ed might have gone to his grave wondering why he didn’t take a selfie up there. He declined a photo – he was a modest man – and his reluctance opened us to decades of carping and doubt from the English. But we do have the image of Sherpa Tenzing, and we know there were only two men up there at the time and one was Sir Ed. A wag explained Sir Ed’s absence was because they didn’t have a selfie stick. And Sir Ed didn’t have time on top of the world to teach Tenzing how to use a Kodak Box Brownie.

So why are the English trying to debunk one of New Zealand’s greatest, if not the greatest, moments?

Because a documentary team has discovered a boot, foot and sock labelled ‘A.C. Irvine’ sticking out of a melting glacier on Everest. Who on earth gets their Gold Tops personally monogramed? British mountaineers like Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine it seems.

He disappeared on Everest on June 8, 1924, alongside compatriot George Mallory, about 250 metres below the summit as they set off to complete the first documented ascent of the world’s tallest mountain.

Big event, big mystery

Just as much as Hillary’s conquest was one of the 20th century’s most significant events, the disappearance of the British climbers was one of its biggest mysteries. For the British that is.

They found Mallory’s body, but not Irvine’s, nor the camera they were carrying – a camera that might have revealed whether they reached the summit, the first to achieve this milestone, a camera with the potential to rewrite history. Or not. Who said: ‘Think the unthinkable, believe the unbelievable, understand the incomprehensible’? No, I can’t.

The wag reckons the poignant image of Irvine’s boot proves they hadn’t made it to the peak. “It’s pointing up the mountain, the direction they were headed.” Figure that.

JB accompanied Sir Ed on his final pilgrimage to Nepal. Photo: supplied.

But if climbing the world’s tallest mountain first depended on being dapper with angular, boyish, good looks, Mallory would have won at a gallop. And when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, he quipped famously: “Because it’s there.”

But not nearly as famous a quip as that from the man who dreamed, attempted, conquered and came home: “We knocked the bastard off.”

We gazumped them 

There was also the widely held theory the Brits were peeved Sir Ed stole their thunder on another level. The coronation of Elizabeth II as Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms was scheduled just four days later at Westminster Abbey. But, suddenly, a story of great courage, a story of confronting and overcoming fear, the story of a tousled-haired beekeeper from New Zealand captivated the world. How dare he?

Can I share a couple of personal stories about Sir Ed. I was yapping to a friend while walking through the Remuera shopping centre one Saturday morning. I thought I recognised someone shambling the other way and called: “Gidday mate.” Then I stopped and turned to see who I had just greeted. Sir Ed was doing exactly the same. He just smiled, waved and carried on. What a bloke.

A few years later I was privileged enough to travel, as a TV producer, to Kathmandu, to record Sir Ed’s final anniversary trip to his second home. Or was it his first home? As the plane banked to prepare for its approach down the valley into the Nepali capital, Sir Ed whistled me up from a couple of seats away. He just smiled and pointed out the window to where Mt Everest was breaking through the cloud. Was the mountain – called ‘Sagarmatha’ by Nepalis, ‘head of earth touching heaven’ saluting its conqueror? Sharing that sight with the man whose footprints are all over that peak was an unutterable and enduring spiritual moment. And I don’t want a glacier giving up one history rewriting photograph and spoiling it for me. Or Sir Ed. Or New Zealand.