Ed Hillary is returning to Antarctica with NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark (who is herself an excellent climber)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070116/en ... 0116060758

"Controversially, Hillary defied instructions from Fuchs and arrived at the South Pole first on January 4, 1958, marking only the third expedition to reach there by land and the first using vehicles to cross the crevasse-strewn landscape"

Kiwis are always looking for a cheeky way to wind up the Poms, bless 'em. This is totally off topic, so apologies in advance, but it reminds me of an incident back in the early sixties when the RAF sent one of it's then new state-of-the-art "V-Bombers" an Avro Vulcan on a tour of Commonwealth countries. On touch down in NZ the plane was caught in a wind-shear and one wing contacted the runway resulting in heavy damage to the wing and undercarriage. After much agonising about whether to scrap the plane, ship it back to the UK by sea or repair it, it was eventually decided that the RNZAF was able to complete the repairs, which they did - complete with Kiwi roundels which weren't noticed until the thing landed back in the UK to the horror of the stiff-upper-lip-handle-bar-moustache RAF establishment and the British Government.

on both topics...

Sir Ed tells us who his hero is... from the NZ Herald: "...he was never simply going to be support crew for another adventurer and rolled his Fergusons straight over the outraged sputterings of organisers, who felt he should defer to Fuchs. So it is interesting to learn that Sir Ed's hero is not Robert Falcon Scott, the straight-bat British officer after whom the New Zealand base is named (Scott and all his party died of starvation after being beaten to the Pole in 1911 by Norwegian Roald Amundsen). Instead, Sir Ed identifies with the boisterous egalitarianism of Scott's great rival Ernest Shackleton, who twice survived appalling hardship to rescue all his men from death on polar journeys. "Shackleton was undoubtedly my heroic figure," said Sir Ed."

And for anyone interested in learning about the current state of the NZ airforce... http://www.nzfpm.co.nz/

dadndave wrote:"Controversially, Hillary defied instructions from Fuchs and arrived at the South Pole first on January 4, 1958, marking only the third expedition to reach there by land and the first using vehicles to cross the crevasse-strewn landscape"

Kiwis are always looking for a cheeky way to wind up the Poms, bless 'em. This is totally off topic, so apologies in advance, but it reminds me of an incident back in the early sixties when the RAF sent one of it's then new state-of-the-art "V-Bombers" an Avro Vulcan on a tour of Commonwealth countries. On touch down in NZ the plane was caught in a wind-shear and one wing contacted the runway resulting in heavy damage to the wing and undercarriage. After much agonising about whether to scrap the plane, ship it back to the UK by sea or repair it, it was eventually decided that the RNZAF was able to complete the repairs, which they did - complete with Kiwi roundels which weren't noticed until the thing landed back in the UK to the horror of the stiff-upper-lip-handle-bar-moustache RAF establishment and the British Government.

My god I thought this was going to be another H. Clinton thread!!!

And that V bomber story just isn´t funny Dadndave!