In the footsteps of greatness
Waitangi Week gives us a chance to pause and reflect on who we are as a nation and how we got here. Our national day also allows us to consider what it means to be a Kiwi — and what it takes to be a great one. Now that Sir Edmund Hillary and other mighty totara have fallen, New Zealand Herald senior journalist Kurt Bayer asks: Who is our greatest living New Zealander?
THERE are many overused words in today’s English lexicon. Literally, is one. Its incorrect usage literally drives me nuts. New, is another. New product. New information. New beginnings. New, new, new, it’s said and typed and spewed enough to begin to sound strange, causing you to ponder its origins until it starts looking weird, like a scurrying, ashamed lizard that’s lost its tail.
Great is right up there too, nothing new about that. What do we mean by great? It is, of course, a matter entirely subjective, and often impossible to obtain consensus on. For as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote in Half of a Yellow Sun,
‘‘Greatness depends on where you are coming from’’.
There is no means to quantify greatness. No algorithm (yet) invented or dedicated theory to package it into a neat little box. Yet it’s sprayed around like domestic weedkiller. Veinpopping rugby commentators salivate every other player as ‘‘great’’ when really they mean ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘better than average’’. Jordie Barrett, for example, is an All Black. Very good, without doubt, but not a great.
So what exactly constitutes greatness? There are no degrees to it — as a dusty Steinbeck character once mused, there is no ‘‘little bigness’’.
But must it be someone making the world a better place? Must one’s greatness be used for the good of man? Does a great one’s achievements provoke patriotism and pride in our little sliver of land at the elbow end of the world, and inspire us to also achieve on a boxshattering scale? Would that mean that soldiers, the everdiminishing World War 2 veterans now all around 100 years old, who outfoxed the Nazis, are ruled out, scratched? Or could you argue that it elevates them, good overcoming evil? What about the big business boys, great orators, whipsmart lawyers?
Brilliance is a stimulant for revolution, evolution, imagination, and innovation. Sparks fly off greatness like grinding metal. When Nelsonborn atomsplitter Ernest Rutherford won the Nobel Prize in 1908 (he also summedup classic Kiwi ingenuity by saying, ‘‘We haven’t the money, so we’ve got to think’’), New Zealand had a population of just 1 million. Now, more than a century on, it’s just a few amorous nights away from clocking 5 million. So where are all our modern greats? Are they beavering whitecloaked in portacabin labs with smoky overflowing beakers or attaching tiny cameras to giant drones? The rocket man Peter Beck. Perhaps it’s the accidental prodigies, you know, those people at school who were good at everything: clever, sporting, witty, charismatic, magnanimous, and annoyingly good looking? Which echoes probably the most famous quote on greatness, from that great English bard Shakespeare: ‘‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.’’ Wonderful overused words slapped on nerdy Tshirts and dormitory posters worldwide.
For a long time, all this was easy. It was barely a debate. Just one man stood at the pinnacle of Kiwi greatness: Sir Edmund Hillary, the rangy, earthy South Auckland beekeeper who ‘‘knocked the bastard off’’ and stood on top of the world’s tallest mountain, Mt Everest, with Nepalese Sherpa and mountaineer Tenzing Norgay on May 29, 1953.
Indeed, in the 1980s, our Sir Ed topped a poll of greatest living New Zealanders. It wouldn’t have been close.
But it wasn’t just his heroic conquests which made him a national treasure, an untouched living, breathing taonga. The New Zealand public sympathised deeply with him after his wife, Louise, and youngest daughter Belinda died in a plane crash at Kathmandu in 1975. And he displayed many of the traits so treasured by Kiwis: humility, ingenuity, cando attitude.
When asked to describe his lofty achievements in a radio interview three months after topping Everest, he replied simply: ‘‘It was mainly a matter of hard work and time before we got to the summit’’.
Hillary also bore a colonial renegade streak. Although ostensibly a lowerranked member of British expeditions to Everest and five years later during a Commonwealthsponsored overland crossing of the Antarctic via the South Pole, Hillary broke direct orders to lead a ‘‘dash to the pole’’, becoming the first party to reach the Pole overland since Scott in 1912 — and the first by motor vehicles. He was steadfast, determined, bloodyminded, and infamous for doing it his way or to hell with it.
Like other heroes before him, double Victoria Cross winner Charles Upham leaps to mind (‘‘I don’t want to be treated differently from any other bastard’’), where greatness was thrust upon the retiring Hillary, it sat uncomfortably with him. But he also knew it provided a unique platform for him to achieve the things he wanted to do. He achieved near Godlike status in Nepal where he spent many years building hospitals for the local Sherpa population.
But when Sir Ed died in 2008, aged 88, the toppling of the giant totara sent shockwaves through ‘‘the forest of Tane’’.
We’d already lost a natural heir to Sir Ed’s throne in redsocked mustachioed yachtie and fellow adventurer Peter Blake after he was mindlessly murdered by Amazonian pirates in 2001.
And what of sports? William Hazlitt once wrote that, ‘‘A great chess player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it’’, and doesn’t that apply here? Our greatest Olympian Sir Peter Snell, who won three gold medals, died in December aged 80, and was undoubtedly an athletics great, right alongside New Zealand’s first female Olympic gold medallist, former long jump world recordholder, Dame Yvette Corlett (Williams). Sir Colin ‘‘Pinetree’’ Meads was a great—– like Hillary and Blake, his gruff toughness betrayed by kind, twinkling eyes — but again he died in 2017 aged 81. Who does that leave?
Richie McCaw, having won two World Cups while being a wellrounded good bugger, shrugging off miraculous onfield feats with ‘‘Oh, yeah na, the boys . . . ’’, will maybe one day claim the title of being great, but since he’s still in his 30s, can he yet be counted? It’s dubious, and akin to a sportsman’s autobiography being released midcareer.
For some, it still could be a sportsperson. Sir Richard Hadlee? Our finest cricketer, autodidact rhythm and swing and onetime holder of the most test wickets. What about Sir Murray Halberg, or Sir John Walker? Who could ever forget Walker’s flowing locks turning for home in the 1500m final as he claimed gold at the 1976 Olympics? Lefty golfer Sir Bob Charles for winning the British Open in 1963 or squash great Dame Susan Devoy who became Race Relations Commissioner.
A lot of sirs and dames in there, gotta be a sure sign we’re on to something.
What about a member of the Adams family? Another dame and double Olympic champion Valerie has to be up there, and not just for once (narrowly) beating me in a gumbootthrowing competition. Then again, she might not even be the greatest in her own family. Slightly taller basketball brother Steven is one of the most accomplished, and toughest, big men of the NBA family, famed for his typicallyKiwi unassuming manner and formal wearing of shorts. But basketball isn’t rugby, and this is still New Zealand. Rugger rugger rugger, rah rah rah.
Dare I mention Sonny Bill Williams? Crosscode offloader, the Muslim prizefighter pinup boy. Polarising, love himhate him, but should that matter, for as Ralph Waldo Emerson once suggested, ‘‘To be great is to be misunderstood’’.
Anyway, doesn’t being known just by your initials or solely by a nickname make you great? Pinetree. Sir Ed. Val. Paddles.
But no. Like politicians, SBW is too divisive a figure. Honourable mentions here for former Prime Minister and United Nations heavyweight Helen Clark, and current PM Jacinda Ardern who some tip to become the first New Zealander since Rutherford to win a Nobel Prize for her dignified and compassionate response to the March 15 mosque shootings.
What about business and philanthropy? A tough sell for honest, everyday Kiwis to care much for the uber wealthy, regardless of generosity of achievements. So out go Sir Roger Douglas, Sir Owen Glenn, prickly pugilistic property guru
Sir Bob Jones and even seemingly allround good fella Sir Stephen Tindall, Warehouse founder, philanthropist and investor.
Genuine worthy contenders must include equal pay campaigner and aged care worker Kristine Bartlett and public health campaigner Dr Lance O’Sullivan. And until his passing last October, 39yearold cancer care advocate and father of two wee girls Blair Vining, would’ve been right there too. They’ve also shown what a true hero can be: fearless and bold; creative, smart and stubborn.
You could argue that they deserve to be here more than anybody else. Take people from the entertainment industry. They get paid doing what they love, generally. They’re held up as champions and role models, and often rightly so.
Funny man Mike King for his mental health crusade or Xena:
Warrior Princess Lucy Lawless for her fearless environmental work. Lord of the barefoot and rumpled shirt Sir Peter Jackson? Sam Neill? (Northern Irishborn, did you know that?) Taika Waititi? Surely they’d all form an orderly behind the queen of the Kiwi arts, soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, who’s received standing ovations at every major opera house in the world. For decades.
What about musicians? Pop sensation Lorde would lead the Instaera, followers who wouldn’t know a DD Smash from a DUI crash.
Could there even be a special category for great who our transtasman cousins have tried to claim? Neil and Tim Finn of Split Enz and Crowded House fame? Maybe even Gladiator star and the late Martin Crowe’s cousin, Russell Crowe, although I suspect he falls alongside SBW and Christchurchborn English cricketer and World Cup hero Ben Stokes with many Kiwis saying, ‘‘You can have ’em if you want ’em’’.
Does it matter if the accomplishments are done here or offshore? Does that taint the glow?
Heroes and greats in a small country like New Zealand are close enough to touch. It’s not seven degrees of separation — it’s more like three. You might personally know a great (or very good). Your dad went to school with his uncle. Sometimes you see him at Countdown or the pool with his kids. Drives a blue Ford Ranger.
Then there’s the lonely wordsmiths, who’s thought of them? Poet Sam Hunt, the laconic Kiwi Kerouac, whose rhythmical ‘‘road songs’’ surely make him a candidate — a living great.
‘‘They ask me why I travel, never settle down. I lose two games of pool and hitchhike out of town.’’
Eleanor Catton, whose second novel, The Luminaries, based during the New Zealand gold rush, made her the youngest winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize, but at the same turn duly rules her out. And besides, I couldn’t get past page 45, did you? Catton stands behind fuller bodies of work by the elder statesmen and pen women of trailblazing ‘‘Maori novelist’’ Witi Ihimaera, Maurice Gee, CK Stead, Lloyd Jones, children’s author Joy Cowley and Keri Hulme.
Tim Shadbolt? The grinning exhippie who’s the longestserving mayor of any New Zealand city, with 11 terms as Invercargill’s high honcho. He might rule himself out though, as I once heard him at a comedy gig deliver a gag in his inimitable way, that his finest achievement was pushing for the Invercargill International Airport . . . ‘‘which to this day is yet to have an international plane land there’’.
And a final leap of faith, a personal favourite, how ’bout bungy pioneer AJ Hackett who’s probably done more than any other to cement New Zealand’s reputation as an adventure sport mecca and driven the tourism dollar, particularly around the booming Queenstown area? Leeegend.
In the end, they’re all great New Zealanders. But are they Great, with a capital G? Or GREAT? Are they even more deserving that the plumber and volunteer firearm who coaches his kids’ rugby team? Or the stayathome mum who cooks meals for her elderly neighbours and chips in at the local toy library every second Saturday morning?
Yes I’ve typed a frankly ridiculous 41 question marks so far (with three more to come) but that’s maybe because there is no final answer. My greats probably don’t match your greats, even though your greats are flatout wrong, but we’d probably both have to admit that our greats are at least fairtomiddling.
Because, in the end, aren’t all these Kiwis, as a reflection of us all, pretty bloody great? When all of us are tipped out, turned up the right way, shuffled about, and slotted together like a
4.9 millionpiece puzzle, aren’t we all great together, as a tiny floating nation, quietly doing little miracles every day, for one another, for ourselves, and for the world? If not, then what are we but a question mark at the bottomright corner of the map?