Graffiti told its own tale

By AINSLEY THOMSON and NZPA

It may remain the great, lost Sir Edmund Hillary memorial.

According to Act leader Richard Prebble, hidden among the bike-shed rafters at Auckland Grammar School lies one of the first pieces of evidence of Sir Edmund's climbing skills.

Mr Prebble, in a Parliamentary tribute to Sir Edmund this week, recalled how as a Grammar third-former in the 1960s he decided to risk a detention and climb to the top of the rafters of the bike shed, which he described as an "Everest climb" for a 1.2m (4ft) schoolboy.

"I thought I should mark the occasion and pulled out my pocketknife, thinking I would carve my name into the rafters to show that I had been the first to climb the third-form bike shed," he said.

"I blew away the dust and realised that someone had carved their name before me ... E Hillary."

But a Weekend Herald visit to Auckland Grammar in search of the historic piece of graffiti proved fruitless: the rafters in the 1920s bike shed have been boarded over.

Dr Richard Sorrenson, Grammar's director of development, said that after Sir Edmund, who was a student at the school from 1931 to 1935, conquered Everest his name was etched all round the school by admiring students.