CHANCE & TRAGEDY

On the steep ridge-line above the little village of Kunde, we paused at the three memorial chortens at 4100 metres, built by the villagers for my father, mother and little sister, and it occurred to me for the first time that I was up in the Himalayas with a group of people who had all known them. That had never happened before. And as we gazed out towards the bulk of Mt Everest and down at the little hospital my parents had built in the village, this connection with the past and my “precious ones” felt particularly special.

Back in 1975, the Hillary family were living in Nepal to help my father, Ed, build his biggest hospital at the important village of Phaphlu, five days’ trek south of Kunde. My mother, Louise, 43, and younger sister, Belinda, 16, boarded a small plane to fly into the mountains to join Dad at the building site. But the New Zealand pilot, who was notorious for his disregard for the safety regimes of aviation, pushed the throttle to maximum power and lifted the plane into the air above Kathmandu before realising the control guards were still attached to the ailerons. He lost control of the aircraft and it dived into a paddy field north of the runway near the great stupa of Boudhanath. No one survived, and the Hillarys lost half of our family, our hearts forever broken and our lives forever changed. Chance events change everything and take the trajectory of life in new, unanticipated directions.