Windy then rainy, it's the sort of day when Sir Edmund Hillary might have sat in his lounge with a friend and reminisced about a close call on a Himalayan slope or the tribulations of building schools in Nepal's mountain villages.
Instead, 11 days after his death in Auckland aged 88, the Mt Everest conquerer lies in St Mary's church, Parnell, his casket draped with the New Zealand flag and Sherpa prayer scarves, as others talk about his extraordinary life.
Next door, in Holy Trinity Cathedral, hundreds sit watching the service on a big screen, like thousands of others in Auckland's Domain and in other cities' churches. Thousands had already paid their respects to Sir Ed as he lay in state in the cathedral for nearly 24 hours before the funeral service.
A lone navy drummer marks time as clergy lead the casket borne by military pall bearers the short distance from cathedral to church.
A crowd looks on from behind barricades along the footpath and a banner dangling from an apartment block balcony across the road reads "Sir Edmund, sure to rise".
Rover Scouts hand out the Order of Service in the cathedral grounds and, across the road, Members of Parliament mill outside an Italian bakery, waiting to go into the church for the service.
Norman Hardie from Christchurch and Jan Morris from Britain talk to reporters on the cathedral lawn. Norman, 83, clutches his autobiography On my Own Two Feet - The life of a Mountaineer. He went on three big expeditions with Sir Ed in the 1950s and '60s to the Himalayas and Antarctica and came across him later on school building projects in Nepal.
What's his most enduring memory of Sir Ed?
"I've great respect for the fact it didn't go to his head," he says. "The first to climb Mt Everest was still very humble. He didn't change at all."
Sponsors would come easily for Sir Ed's school and hospital building projects in Nepal after his Everest feat, Norman recalls.
Jan Morris was on Sir Ed's historic 1953 Everest expedition, representing The Times. It was she who sent the first message out in code that told the Brits Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay had conquered Earth's highest peak - or as Sir Ed would later put it "knocked the bastard off."
By now, mourners are arriving. A girl with a teddy bear, a Nepalese couple in traditional dress with a small boy, New Zealanders young and old, there to farewell the man Prime Minister Helen Clark calls "the most famous New Zealand of our time."
"He went to a height and a place that no man had gone before," Clark tells the congregation.
"He went there with 1950s not 21st Century technology. He went there with well honed climbing skills developed in New Zealand, Europe and Nepal itself. But above all he went there with attitude, with a clear goal, with courage and with a determination to succeed," she says.
Clark says his can do pragmatism and his humility endeared Sir Ed to New Zealand, making him an inspiration and a role model for generations.
Sir Ed's daughter Sarah Hillary says she was 10 when the family first visited Nepal. She found it all strange but remembers lots of laughter around the campfire in the evenings.
"Friendship was very important to my father.
"Ed loved to laugh and his dry wit was irresistible."
Son Peter Hillary says adventure was compulsory in the Hillary family.
"He took us to the most extraordinary places."
He recalls being plucked from school in Auckland as a seven-year-old when the family flew to Chicago for a year. But it wasn't just Chicago. There were long car trips across Canada and Alaska.
There was the event he looks back on now as "the long dark tragedy of our family story" - the plane crash in Kathmandu in 1975 that killed his mother Louise and younger sister Belinda.
Then there was the occasion back home when after three cups of tea, Sir Ed broke the silence, asking Peter if he would like to go to the North Pole.
Ang Rita Sherpa, chief administrative officer of the Himalayan Trust, says Sir Edmund's loss to the Sherpa people is "bigger and heavier than Mt Everest."
Sir Ed had responded to their request and built the first school in the villages of the Mt Everest region in 1960.
Norbu Tenzing Norgay, son of Tenzing Norgay who conquered Mt Everest with Sir Edmund, says the changes he brought to the Sherpas are profound. There are now 63 schools in the region, plus hospitals, water systems and miles of trials, thanks to Sir Ed's charitable trusts.
Piped out of the church to the strains of Abide with Me, Sir Ed's casket passes through a guard of honour by New Zealand Alpine Club members.
On the cathedral forecourt, barefoot schoolchildren from Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate perform a specially composed haka called He Maunga Teitei - The Lofty Mountain, as the casket slides into the hearse.
The cortege sets off for Sir Edmund's final journey. Hundreds of people lining barricades on the footpath clap.
Murray Taylor is one of them. He says he's there for his childhood hero, "the greatest New Zealand person who's ever lived."
Kristina Cassels-Brown says she spent an hour in the cathedral paying her respects the night before because Sir Edmund has "just always been there and been such an inspiration."
He might not have wanted all this fuss, she says "but we wanted to tell his family what a wonderful person he's been."
Self-effacing though he was, Sir Edmund may just have allowed himself a nod to the crowd for their acknowledgement of a life well lived.
