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Tributes to the great adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary, who passed
away at Auckland City Hospital at 9am on Friday morning, have begun
to flow in:
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
"He was a truly great hero who captured the imagination of the
world, a towering figure who will always be remembered as a pioneer
explorer and leader."
Australia's Acting Prime Minister Julia
Gillard
"Sir Edmund's name is synonymous with adventure, with achievement,
with dreaming and then making those dreams come true.
"I'm sure there will be many Australians today who reflect on his death. People always looked at him as a man of achievement and I think people today will mark his passing with regret."
South Australian Premier Mike Rann
Mike Rann grew up in New Zealand and says Sir Ed's reputation was
like a colossus across that landscape. He says he spread the ethic
of honourable effort and merciful ingenuity across the planet.
Rann says Sir Ed stirred our hearts and by his lifelong strivings - upward, ever upward - helped make this a better world.
Ang Rita - first graduate of the first school opened by
Hillary in the Everest region in 1960s.
"He has done so much for us. If he is incarnated he can again
continue to do good work for the human beings.
"Many Sherpa people have offered private prayers while many others
are holding special services in monasteries."
Millionaire Australian adventurer and philanthropist Dick
Smith
"To me he was the greatest adventurer of the 20th Century."
Everest summiteer Andrew Lock
"It was ground-breaking stuff, trying to find out if the human body
could even survive those altitudes in those days.
"He was just the sort of climber that all other climbers looked up
to as the absolute pinnacle of appropriate and ethical climbing,"
said Lock.
Mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape
Macartney-Snape, who has twice summited Everest, said Hillary used
his fame not for his own personal gain but to help the people of
Nepal.
"His fame didn't change him at all, he just used that for his work
for the people of Nepal. He was a great humanitarian.
"The Solu Khumbu district in Nepal will be in mourning for a long
time because many of the people who are there now, the younger
people, went to Hillary's schools or their lives would have been
saved by those clinics."
British Conservative leader David Cameron
Cameron described the adventurer as "a giant of the 20th
century".
"His and Tenzing Norgay's conquest of Everest represents one of the
great peaks of human achievement, and the work Sir Edmund did to
help the Sherpa people of Nepal is testament to the friendship they
forged," he said.
"He was a great New Zealander, who provided the most auspicious
start to the reign of the Queen, and has been a credit to the
Commonwealth ever since."
British adventurer and environmentalist Pen
Hadow
Padow said Sir Ed's death closed "one of the great chapters of
planetary exploration".
Share your thoughts and feelings about the passing of this
great New Zealander on our message board. ONE News will compile
your comments into a book of remembrance which will be
presented to his family.
