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SCOTT BASE - Edmund Hillary thinks we're pretty soft these days. Not that he would be impolite enough to say so, but down in Antarctica the 87-year-old adventurer is losing patience with the mountains of polypropylene, fleece, down, fur and wool that modern visitors to the frozen continent wear.
In 1957, he and a team of hardy adventurers built Scott Base with their bare hands, wearing the kind of gear that most of us don for a gentle bushwalk.
"We never had all these vast quantities of clobber," Sir Ed said, sitting in the original Scott Base hut, where he slept, worked and ate with his 23-strong party for the perennially dark winter of that year. "[The hut] took us five hours to put together and it has stood up to every blizzard Antarctica could throw at it.
"We drove to the South Pole with good-quality down equipment, which kept us [warm], even though we had no heating in our little tractors. But we were adequately clothed, even when the average temperature was round about minus 30C," he said.
"I don't quite know why we have all this junk," he said, gesturing at the Canada Goose down jacket he was wearing.
During ceremonies to mark the 50th anniversary of Scott Base, Sir Ed dropped his walking stick, largely because the bulky jacket and thick gloves make fine motor movements virtually impossible.
"Bugger," he muttered into the microphone, before launching into a speech on how proud he was of all that New Zealand scientists, engineers and adventurers have achieved in Antarctica.
"This is a wonderful base, and I certainly hope it will keep going for another 50 years."
He also thanked the Americans at nearby McMurdo Station for 50 years of co-operation - including unwittingly passing on their discarded tools and equipment to New Zealanders who would make regular fossicking trips looking for useful "junk". "Now if anybody over at McMurdo has any spare BMWs or anything like that we're quite happy to clean them up, tidy them up."
The New Zealand flag was raised over the base by 20-year-old James Blake, son of the late New Zealand adventurer Peter Blake, who has taken a break from his first year of environmental science studies at Bristol University to work on restoring the historic huts of explorers Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton.
"My dad was going to come down here and help out in any way he could, but unfortunately he didn't get the chance," said James.
Sir Ed has signed 100 commemorative first day cover envelopes, which can be won by those who buy Scott Base stamp packs from New Zealand Post.
