KEY POINTS:
Weatherbeaten and exhausted, Edmund Hillary and his men couldn't stop laughing when they reached the South Pole in 1958 - victory was so sweet.
After devouring a steak dinner cooked by the American military staff, the Kiwis joined their hosts for a movie - a cowboy flick in which the hero climbed a sheer cliff and rescued his fair maiden, before sending the villain plunging to his doom. "Then, with a great clatter of music he and the maiden rode off into the sunset.
"You know my team of five had pulled pretty hard all the way from South Base and been to a degree in constant danger ... and we found this so funny, that the hero should be riding off into the sunset. Our good friends, the Americans, really couldn't understand why we were laughing but we staggered off to bed, still laughing."
Sir Ed was reminiscing about his 1957-58 polar expedition in the bar of Scott Base yesterday, remembering the anger of British lead explorer Sir Vivian "Bunny" Fuchs at being beaten to the pole - especially as the Kiwi party were meant to act as support crew for his transantarctic crossing.
After building Scott Base in January 1957, Sir Ed put his engineers to work turning their Massey Ferguson tractors into Antarctic transports, having decided he could make it to the pole. But some raised ethical objections and only four men accompanied him all the way.
"We had to put depots out over the Polar Plateau and we were getting a good deal further in advance of Bunny Fuchs' team ... we were only 500 miles [800km] from the pole and I decided that we would push on and try and reach the pole itself. [The decision] wasn't altogether approved of by many other members, however we had sufficient of us to want to do it and so the five of us carried on."
Asked if the criticism he received for trumping Sir Vivian was difficult, he said: "No, it wasn't difficult. I was a somewhat bloody-minded youngish man and I realised our committee in Wellington, none of them had ever been to the Antarctic, and so I decided to follow my own judgment."
Sir Vivian did "get it back to me", Sir Ed said, by making the young Hillary travel the entire return journey lying in the back of one of the British snowmobiles.
Now 87, Sir Ed said that when he sat in the cockpit of a US Air Force Globemaster as it landed on Pegasus ice runway, "I just felt that in a sense I was back home again".
Today, Sir Ed will preside over ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of Scott Base. "For me, it's a great thrill to be back here again, particularly as I know this is probably the last opportunity I will get to visit.
"When I get the opportunity, I speak up for the preservation of the Antarctic continent and particularly its waters. It still horrifies me, when I see on television the whales being killed by the Japanese and by the Norwegians."
He volunteered words of admiration for Prime Minister Helen Clark, who yesterday visited the South Pole with husband Peter Davis.
"I admire our Prime Minister for her outdoor activities. She's a great lover of the outdoors and you always find her heading off in winter for some little challenging thing.
"That's nice, to have a Prime Minister who enjoys New Zealand as much as many of us do."
As he was helped out of his chair, Sir Ed added: "I don't expect the new leader of the Opposition will appreciate those comments, but he'll get over it."
Three almost a crowd on journey of lifetime
The South Pole is only a short flight from Scott Base these days but it is still the journey of a lifetime.
So when Prime Minister Helen Clark was offered a seat on board an American military plane travelling to the pole yesterday, she did not want husband Peter Davis to miss out.
The only problem was the only other available seat had already been taken by Antarctica New Zealand chairman Paul Hargreaves.
Delicate inquiries were made about whether all three could travel but the answer was no. Mr Hargreaves' name was struck off the list - but only temporarily.
After some further diplomatic persuasion by Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson, the Americans found another seat and Mr Hargreaves was on board.
