Mount Everest sherpa Tenzing Norgay touched hearts, changed lives on 1960s Tassie trip

by Zoe Kean

Mon 18 Nov

Tenzing Norgay encounters wallabies at Cynthia Bay near Mount Field, Tasmania. 
(Supplied: Jack Thwaites Collection, Tasmanian Archives NS3195/1/2836)

Imagine being 11 years old, on a family outing to a lake, when, without warning, one of your all-time heroes unexpectedly walks out from the forest and starts talking to your family.

In 1953, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary became the first two people confirmed to have summitted the world's tallest mountain, Mount Everest.

Just under 10 years later, young Tasmanian Allan King was at the Lake Dobson car park at Mount Field National Park in Tasmania when Norgay, the famed Nepalese Sherpa and mountaineer, emerged from a hiking track.

A young Allan King and his little brother were delighted to meet Norgay. 
(Supplied: Tasmanian State Archives, NS3195/1/2858)

The chance meeting would leave a deep impression on King.

"He appeared out of nowhere and walked over to mum and dad as if he knew us," King recalls.

"It was just like hail-fellow-well met, as if he knew us."

Being curious, King had one question he was bursting to ask his hero: who was really the first person to reach the top?

"I was certain at that age that he must have got there before Sir Edmund," King explains.

"I'll never forget the smile on his face, because he turned and he said to me, 'We both reached the top'."

King remembers Norgay fielding his questions with kindness and diplomacy.

"To me, he was just a legend," King says.

Why was Tenzing in Tasmania?

Norgay had been invited to Tasmania by Jack Thwaites, a conservationist, pioneer bushwalker, and co-founder of the Hobart Walking Club.

Norgay and Jack Thwaites at Mount Field. (Supplied: Jack Thwaites Collection, Tasmanian Archives NS3195-1-283)

Thwaites had been instrumental in early expeditions in the rugged south-west and Du Cane Range and was in the party that made the first official crossing of the Overland Track.

Thwaites had previously hosted Sir Edmond on a multiday trip to Tasmania's south-west in 1960.

Norgay's visit to Tasmania lasted 21 days. Hosted by the Adult Education Board, he visited shows, schools, clubs and societies.

His Tassie trip was topped off with a four-day camping trip at Mount Field National Park, where King bumped into him.

The board emphasised getting into nature and physical exercise and often organised outdoor odysseys.

Queenslander Tony Fox was 25 when he heard that Norgay was going to be at Mount Field and he knew he had to make the trip.

"It was a 'once in a lifetime' … someone like that does not come to Australia every day of the week," he says.

Fox was low on cash in '63, but he was determined to join the camping trip.

A mate dropped him off on the outskirts of Brisbane, he hitchhiked to the Bass Strait ferry and then hitched again to Hobart to join busloads of people headed to Mount Field.

"Now I'm 86, but I was young and dumb," he says.

Despite the snow outside, Fox recalls the campers enjoying cosy nights in the national park's historic cabins.

A letter that Norgay (centre) wrote to campers has been kept all this time by Fox (right). (Supplied: Tony Fox)

First published at ABC News, November 18, 2024

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