It was in a Dunedin flat over a feed of potatoes and mutton that Jim Wilson met Sir Edmund Hillary in 1962.
As a 26-year-old relatively inexperienced mountaineer, Mr Wilson was in awe.
“I can remember our mutual friend, Michael, brought him to our flat in Dunedin and forever after, he (Sir Ed) always claimed we fed him a whole sack of potatoes and a whole side of mutton, but he was exaggerating, it was only a quarter of mutton.
“We were hugely in awe of Ed, but he just immediately put us at ease. He was a lovely, friendly man. We were mountaineers, and he was the first mountaineer who had made the first descent of Everest (1953).
He was very famous,” Mr Wilson said.
The very next year the pair, who soon became close friends, embarked on their first expedition together to Nepal, Sir Ed’s schoolhouse expedition.
“He would persuade young mountaineers to come with him to Nepal. Well, he didn’t persuade us, he invited us and we would leap at the chance.”
On Thursday, a movie starring both Mr Wilson and Sir Ed recounted their most dangerous expedition, navigating the length of the Ganges, a 2500km river that flows through India and Bangladesh, then climbing a peak above the river’s headwaters.
But it’s not the first time film-maker, Michael Dillion, has made the film.
In 1979, Dillion released From the Ocean to the Sky based on the experiences he and the crew had in 1977, during Sir Ed’s Ocean to Sky expedition.
Now, the remade film will weave in the original footage while the men still alive from the expedition, who are now in their 60s, 70s and 80s, recount the events with different insight and wisdom.
When approached by Dillion about the re-make, Mr Wilson, now 82-years-old, admits he thought Dillion was crazy.
“He interviewed all us survivors, I thought it was a crazy idea. We old folk can hardly remember our names, let alone what happened 43 years ago.
“But, when prompted, I could remember virtually everything. It was the highlight of our lives, with Ed, driving jet boats up this sacred river in India,” Mr Wilson said.
With barely any training, Sir Ed took Mr Wilson as one of the jet boat drivers for the trip.
But that’s just the way he liked it, Mr Wilson said.
“Only Ed would decide it was a good idea to take a novice jet boat driver. Ed liked to have some of his mates along, rather than just experts. Despite the fact nine years before I had sunk a boat of his in Nepal, he still chose me again. He was very loyal.”
Nine years earlier Mr Wilson had misread a wave and drove one of Sir Ed’s jetboats into the river bed, causing it to overturn.
“That halved the fleet and put the whole expedition at risk. Feeling very sheepish, I crawled up the riverbank and went to apologise to Ed and all he said was: ‘C’est la vie.’ Not a word of incrimination.”
“If he knew or at least thought that you had done your best, even if your best was a total catastrophe that it was in this case, it wasn’t even a question of forgiving you, he just accepted it,” Mr Wilson said.
Mr Wilson feared he would have “difficulty saying anything meaningful” when he heard of the film’s re-make.
“But his questions (Dillion) were so good and he drew an enormous amount out of us about how much we loved Ed particularly when we were talking about bringing him down from the camp and we thought he was going to die. He really brought out of us the tension and unity of the group and effort we were putting in to try and save Ed’s life. I found it quite moving seeing it again.”
The movie also features scenes of Sir Ed visiting the crash site, where his wife Louise and daughter Belinda, were killed in a plane crash near Kathmandu in 1975. Sir Ed blamed himself for the disaster.
“He’s woven in these reflections of ours, 42 years later. We loved him, we would have gone anywhere with him and done anything for him,” Mr Wilson said.
With his wife Ann, Mr Wilson has lived in Redcliffs for 54 years and is now retired and spends his time with his grandchildren, playing tennis and e-biking.
“It’s a wonderful period of life,” he said.
