Header image: Statue of Sir Edmund Hillary looking toward Mount Cook, New Zealand
‘On 4 January 1958 Sir Edmund Hillary and his New Zealand party reached the South Pole. They were the first to do so overland since Scott in 1912, and the first to reach it in motor vehicles.’
I WAS BORN on this day in 1958, just two days before Edmund Hillary and his team reached their South Pole objective.
In honour of their extraordinary feat I was given the explorer’s name within my own. It’s my small, personal link to a tenacious champion who advanced not because the way before him was easy, but because turning back was never his measure of success.
The Trans-Arctic Expedition’s three converted Ferguson TE-20 tractors equipped with caterpillar tracks and canvas cabins for protection.
Hillary’s achievement was never just about conquest or fame. No, his triumph lay in his willingness to endure — to keep moving when the landscape offered no comfort and even fewer assurances.
For him, the South Pole ― like the summit of Everest five years earlier ― was reached not in a blaze of drama, but through dogged persistence — step after difficult step.
‘You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.’
AS I MARK another birthday, I’m increasingly conscious that my own life has required the climbing of mountains no less real for being invisible. However, bearing Hillary’s name has given me a steady inner prompt — that perseverance, rather than force, is how mountains in the mind are overcome.
There have been stretches where progress was slow, where the summit seemed distant or even impossible to attain, and where simply putting one foot in front of the other was an act of resolve.
I don’t claim comparisons of scale or heroism. But I do recognise the same subtle truth: that difficult ground is crossed by continuing to move, by respecting one’s limits without surrendering to them, and by trusting that determination itself is a pole star, one that will guide you to where you need to be.
‘Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.’
AND SO TODAY, my birthday, I honour my namesake, Edmund Hillary — and the reminder his name has impressed upon me, that even the harshest landscapes can be traversed, and that reaching any personal pole is reason enough to pause, reflect … and be grateful.
Sir Edmund Hillary and (courtesy of 21st century magic) Stephen Hillary Wand
‘It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.’
RAVEN MOON 