LAST NIGHT, I HARDLY SLEPT. AFTER DRIVING SIX hours yesterday to New Plymouth through pouring rain, detours and road works, I hunkered down at my cousin Nat’s house for the night. This morning, skies still heavy, I can’t even swallow my breakfast. For the very first time, I am about to interview someone from Erebus.
I’ve heard this guy is a real professional—tough and fit, a closed book. As I nervously read his email yet again, double-checking our meeting time and place, I ask myself what the hell I’m doing. I really hope I don’t piss him off.
It’s still pelting down, sheets of rain sent to test my determination. A silent prayer hums through my mind as I cut through the traffic. Don’t let me be late. Don’t let me get lost. Don’t let me get wet. I drive towards the ocean, past the wind wand and around to the undercover carpark, the smouldering black ironsand of every summer holiday now a cold harsh grey.
I walk to our meeting place, sheltering in doorways and under shop awnings, my umbrella no match for the storm. I eventually find an arty little cafe perched above the main street with great views of the steely ocean beyond. My view to the south is limited by the weather, but still I can feel Taranaki hovering in the background, waiting for me to arrive. This way.
I shake off my brolly and jacket. I home in on a corner table set just as Eileen would have it: a small vase of flowers on a crocheted doily, a sugar bowl covered in lace with coloured dangly beads to weigh it down. I sit and try to busy myself. I set out my notes, my phone, my purse. I look up every time someone walks in, but I have no idea who to look for. I put my purse away, get it out again.
Then a man and a woman walk in. They head straight for the counter, where she talks to someone she knows, her face shining through the heavy skies of the morning. He stands back, his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched, scanning the room with a half-smile on his weather-beaten face. Then he catches my eye, and his body turns towards me.
That must be him.
I smile, and he casts a glance to the sunny lady before heading over. She notices, and follows him.
We don’t know each other, but the things we have in common are billowing between us. I introduce myself and extend my hand formally, putting a lid on any affection that might spill from my grateful and excited heart.
‘I’m Rex,’ he says. ‘And this is my partner, Sally. She owns the cafe. She wanted to meet you as well.’
We all shake hands warmly, then Sally returns to the counter.
‘Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me,’ I say to Rex, while Sally is busy getting our drinks. ‘I know my email must have come out of the blue, but a few people mentioned your name, and I felt I had to follow it up.’
Rex removes his jacket and pulls out the chair to my right, a thin veil falling over his face as he waits for me to continue, the pounding waves outside echoing the rush of words I am fighting to contain.
I first heard Rex Hendry’s name when I spoke to Sergeant Bruce Irvine, a New Zealand Search and Rescue (SAR) trainer at the New Plymouth police station, and more recently from my cousin Nat’s husband, Brook, who is a SAR volunteer. Both Bruce and Brook told me Rex was one of the most experienced mountaineers on the SAR team, that his knowledge was unsurpassed, that he was one of the good guys. Then, as if their conversations had been orchestrated, they both added one final statement—Rex could talk about orienteering, mountain rescue and Antarctica all day, but he never spoke about Erebus.
Rex has been involved with New Zealand SAR for over 40 years, working closely with police and mountaineers across the country. At different times, he has held several roles with the Department of Conservation (DOC), helping to design and maintain walking tracks along the length of Aotearoa. He still works seasonally at Scott Base for Antarctica New Zealand, and also runs a small orchard in the foothills of Mount Taranaki. I’ve done some research, so I already know a little bit about the quiet man sitting in front of me. I know about his love of the outdoors—and of Antarctica in particular—and the enjoyment he gets from scaling tall things and ‘going bush’. He is famed for his knowledge of and dedication to the environment, his tactical abilities, and his support of the police SAR team and of DOC rangers.
God, I hope he’ll trust me enough to speak about Erebus.
I read somewhere that Rex was just 24 years old, an electrician and SAR volunteer, when he applied to go to Scott Base on their winter-over programme in 1979. It was his first time in Antarctica, and he had only just started his contract when the plane crashed into the mountain. I mention this now.
Slowly, the veil lifts. Rex clears his throat, then he clears it again. He starts asking me what I would like to know, then cuts himself off.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I may as well start at the beginning.’
Rex’s quiet, firm voice carries across the table, and he begins to talk about that clear November day. He describes the weather and the terrain, and I hear the names of people and places that I recognise from my research, spattered with Kiwi colloquialisms and mountaineering jargon. He speaks about the staff and culture and facilities at Scott Base in 1979, about sector whiteout and Ross Island and Mount Erebus.
These details are rattled off by heart, a tape reel that Rex has played and replayed often throughout the years—usually in his mind and not out loud. Not to someone like me.
I sit there, and I listen.
Rex was on the first helicopter that flew to the crash site. He was one of the first six people to see the devastation up close, the dark smear, the scattered bodies and the whirling debris. To this day, the experience that he and his fellow mountaineers had still affects them; of the sixteen-odd mountaineers who worked the crash site, Rex only knows of one other who will speak openly about what he saw. The rest of them keep it to themselves.
Back then, it was frowned on to brag, to tell tales of derringdo. Even the stories published in the New Zealand Alpine Journal at the time were written in very toned-down language. It was very different to today’s social-media saturated landscape, where lots of climbers stop to take brag shots while they’re actually climbing. In 1979, bragging was much more subtle. You’d brag by doing a harder route, or a tougher climb, or three peaks in a day. Mountaineers went out there because of their passion for the mountain, rather than the fame.
All external communication from Scott Base was cut off for several weeks after the plane, in Rex’s words, ‘hit the hill’. This telephone ban meant the staff at Scott Base avoided getting caught up in the ensuing media storm. Rex had no idea what was going on back home, because they were so isolated, so protected. They had a job to do, so they just got on and did it.
He did, however, wonder if his parents had been on the flight, because they’d talked about it often. According to Rex, it would have been his dad’s style to catch the last flight of the season and not tell a soul, then hop on the radio as they flew by to give his son a surprise shout-out. But, with the communication ban, Rex had no way to get word from home.
‘There was no real way of knowing,’ he says.
No way to know if his parents had been on the flight, no way to call home, no way to process the details of what he saw on the mountain with the people he admired and loved the most.
He wrote a letter home to find out if his parents were okay, and it wasn’t until he got the reply weeks later that he could rest easy.
Instead of describing his first visit to the crash site directly—what he saw and his reaction to it all—Rex sets the scene. He goes back to the weeks and months before the crash, to his knowledge of the area, and to the flybys of earlier DC-10s. Given their isolation, a DC-10 flyover was a big deal for those working in the Dry Valleys and Scott Base; it was like getting to see a piece of home. And it wasn’t every day a DC-10 flew overhead. Rex describes how, when they knew one of the big birds was due to fly over, they would set up their tripods at about lunchtime and wait.
On the morning of 28 November 1979, he remembers it was clear weather at Scott Base and to the west of Ross Island. They were all feeling excited about seeing the iconic koru—though, of course, they never got that glimpse of home because the plane never flew past. A few of them soon worked out that this meant the plane couldn’t have been in McMurdo Sound, and they knew it was deadly serious when they learned that the VHF (very high frequency) radio at Vanda Station had lost contact with the DC-10. Well, if that had happened, then the plane couldn’t have been flying line-of-sight, and therefore hadn’t been where it should have been. All the way down there, that was a real no-no.
There were four of them in the SAR team at Scott Base, and in those days the Americans didn’t have a land-based SAR team, so the Kiwis were it. And, as it happened, on the day of the crash the other three SAR members—Hugh Logan, Daryll Thomson and Keith Woodford—were out conducting an exercise with the Americans in the Dry Valleys, while Rex remained behind. Being the only electrician, he was pretty much tied to the base. Of course, the same weather that closed in around Mount Erebus at the time of the crash then descended on the Dry Valleys, stranding the bulk of the New Zealand SAR team. That meant the only available SAR member on the day was Rex.
Talk about timing.
There was still no communication with the DC-10. The ‘point of no return’ for the plane—the midway point at which it would not have had enough fuel to complete its return journey to New Zealand—was at about 2pm or 3pm. While everyone at Scott Base waited for that time to tick over, the base leader, Mike Prebble, and deputy leader (or, in Rex’s words, ‘top cop’ on base), Ted Robinson, began to plan the search party. The SAR operation would be run from McMurdo, since the Americans had twin-engine Iroquois helicopters (Hueys), so that’s where they headed.
The Hueys had been busy flying scientists backwards and forwards to various locations across McMurdo Sound all morning. Once radio contact had been lost with the Air New Zealand DC-10, McMurdo and Scott Base contacted their outposts to establish if there had been any sightings of the plane. The helicopter pilots had been told to keep their eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary, and when they were eventually recalled to base they confirmed there was no visible debris in McMurdo Sound. Just in case, at about 4pm, a US C-130 Hercules was sent out to fly a grid pattern over McMurdo Sound, but the weather closed in. They didn’t find a thing.
A C-141 Starlifter aircraft returning to New Zealand was also tasked with flying over the intended return route of Flight TE901. It didn’t find anything, either.
But a DC-10 couldn’t just disappear.
Later that night after dinner, Rex told Ted he would prepare his kit and get some shut-eye in case he was needed. Rex says he ‘just knew’ he would be. The remainder of the SAR team—Logan, Thomson and Woodford—had been alerted to return to Scott Base, but they remained stuck in the Dry Valleys until the weather improved.
Since November falls in summer in Antarctica, the daylight at that time of year lasts for 24 hours, so it was still bright as day outside. Just after 11pm, word had come in from the Hercules. The crash site had been spotted: a greasy smear on the side of the hill. The pilot hadn’t been able to get close because of turbulence, but had remained in the area to report back and advise on weather conditions as they improved. The decision was made to send in a helicopter crew with a medical team and a mountaineer—Rex—on board, just in case.
Before the stroke of midnight, Ted woke Rex up. The helicopter was on its way.
On its first attempt under the midnight sun, the helicopter got as far as Cape Evans and Cape Royds, but couldn’t get any further round Cape Bird because of the unpredictable weather. So the crew headed back to base to wait it out.
Within an hour of the Herc reporting that the weather was clearing, the helicopter crew headed out for a second attempt. On board with Rex were Kiwi pilot Ian McLeod, an American pilot, an American flight surgeon and two nurses. Besides Rex, none of them had mountaineering experience.
‘There were still whiteout conditions in Lewis Bay, thanks to an inversion layer over Erebus,’ Rex recalls.
This time round, the helicopter eventually made it to the crash site—but the crew’s problems were far from over. Every time the pilots tried to bring the helicopter close enough to land, the inversion layer would buffet them about, making it almost impossible to touch down.
If he was going to investigate the crash site and report back, Rex knew he only had two options. First, he could abseil out of the helicopter above the crash site, then navigate his way down the slope, but this option posed serious issues. From what they’d seen as they’d flown over, the site was heavily crevassed and peppered in wreckage. Giant bits of metal and plastic were being volleyed about as if they were feathers in the fierce winds. Also, Rex would have to go by himself, since no one else on board had mountain kit or experience.
Imagine it: a young mountaineer, experienced and brave, huddled alone on the side of a mountain in the tumultuous weather. There’s no communication. He’s surrounded by a field of crevasses and flying debris. In this weather, he could end up stuck on the ground for a day or more, waiting to be rescued himself.
Rex knew this option would have meant risking his own life.
Unfortunately, the second option was no better. He could be dropped on the sea ice in Lewis Bay at the bottom of Mount Erebus, then scale the ice cliffs—which are up to 80 metres high—on to the slopes of the mountain. Without anyone to assist him, and with poor weather closing in once again, it would be an impossible task.
He still remembers the force of the snow whipping across his view as he weighed up the two undesirable, quite possibly fatal options. Every now and then, a wheel or a piece of fuselage would appear out of the whiteness, then it would quickly disappear like some demon ghost.
Why even consider such dangerous choices as viable options? Rex’s answer is simple. Before him lay an absolute catastrophe. He wanted to do all that he could, ‘just in case there was some sign of life’.
Rex goes quiet for a moment. His fingers caress a large envelope that he has brought to our meeting. Lifting back the flap of the envelope, he removes two photos of Mount Erebus, and passes them to me.
The first photo clearly shows the bottom of the mountain, visible from McMurdo Sound. The tongue of the Erebus Glacier ruptures the pristine landscape as it makes its way towards the sea, while the volcano’s peak has disappeared under high cloud. The mountain is cloaked just like Taranaki was this morning.
The second photo is taken from the north, in Lewis Bay. The snow-covered summit of Mount Erebus is clearly visible against the rich blue sky, but the bottom half of the mountain is under serious cloud cover. Rex explains the danger that my inexperienced eye cannot see: the clear air at the summit is in fact an inversion layer. A layer of cold, heavy air bears down on the mountain from above, with winds of 30 to 40 knots pushing the cloud down and creating dangerous turbulence. This inversion layer, coupled with the cloud cover at the bottom of the mountain and the poor weather system closing in from the north, is why the helicopter couldn’t land on that November day.
Rex points out the location of the crash site. It is clean and white, a moment in time lost amid the beauty of a clear summer day.
Looking at it now, you would never even know what had happened there.
Rex talked through his options with the helicopter pilots. The rest of the crew were untrained in search and rescue, and given the topography and the poor weather conditions Rex knew neither option was technically feasible. ‘It was a hiding to nowhere,’ he remembers. So, the decision was made to return to McMurdo. As soon as they landed, the weather closed in again. If Rex had abseiled out of the helicopter, he would have ended up sitting there on the crevasse-ridden slope of a volcano, amid bodies and aviation fuel and fuselage, trying to shelter from 40-knot winds ‘for god knew how long’ until the storm passed.
By ten o’clock the following morning, the weather had cleared and Rex’s three SAR colleagues returned from the Dry Valleys. While Rex rested, the helicopter flew the rest of the Kiwi SAR team to the mountain, and they successfully landed a couple of hundred metres away from the crash site.
The men checked the site on foot, and found no survivors.
They returned to McMurdo to report their findings.
Two days after the crash, on 30 November, Scott Base management met with Chief Inspector of Air Accidents Ron Chippindale, and Police Inspector Robert (Bob) Mitchell, who had flown to Antarctica the day after the crash. Mitchell was to manage the Antarctic phase of the police response to the Erebus Disaster, dubbed Operation Overdue. Four immediate priorities were quickly established: to survey and mark a grid at the crash site, to construct a helicopter landing pad, to locate the digital flight-data recorder (the black box), and to recover the bodies from the site.
The Antarctic phase of Operation Overdue had serious constraints, not only in the form of weather and resources, but also of time. The air crash investigation and body recovery would have to be completed by 14 December—only two weeks after the accident—as that was when the ice runway was expected to break up.
So, on the evening of 30 November, Rex returned to Mount Erebus as part of the field team deployed to survey and prepare the crash site. Polar tents were erected to accommodate the investigation and recovery teams. The foundations were laid out for the first helicopter landing pad—the recovery of bodies couldn’t begin until this was completed, since landing on the crash site was too dangerous without it.
Rex goes silent again, reaching once more into the brown envelope and removing another photo. This time it’s a black-and-white shot, the slopes of Erebus flat and white and untouched. The clean lines are broken by a burned piece of fuselage the size of a car, a row of polar tents to the right of it. Two mountaineers are busy erecting the tents, a crateload of gear waiting off to the side. In the space between the fuselage and the tents, the landscape lies untouched.
It’s as if the twisted metal had simply fallen out of the sky.
The men have worn a trench round the tents with their boots. Excess snow has been piled to the side in an effort to get the tents pitched flat. These tents need to be just right—for the recovery staff and mountaineers who are soon to arrive, they will be the only protection from the elements during the long days ahead.
Rex tells me he has more photos at home, but there are bodies visible in them. He doesn’t want to share that. My desire to learn everything I can from this humble man is suddenly chastened; these simple words have brought me back to the pain of his reality. I am grateful for his discretion.
He slides the photo across the table towards me, adding it to my collection.
A few days later, someone at Scott Base realised that Rex would be wintering over, and he’d be better to save his mental strength for the long winter ahead. So, Rex and his SAR colleague Daryll Thomson were pulled off Erebus. They returned to Scott Base, and ran field survival training there instead—a prerequisite for all new arrivals to the base.
However, as far as Rex was concerned, the damage had already been done.
Within a few days of the crash, mountaineers Ray Goldring and Roy Arbon, and land surveyors Colin Fink and Peter Hall went to the mountain to join the rest of the Scott Base SAR team. A second team of volunteer mountaineers had also arrived from Christchurch and Wellington, and they too joined their Scott Base colleagues on the crash site. Their role was to survey and flag the crash site, and to maintain on-site safety at all times.
Rex remembers the police arriving, and one young officer in particular: Stuart Leighton. He and Stuart were some of the youngest blokes at Scott Base that summer, and they spent time together at field training and later on at the bar. One night, Rex asked Stuart how he coped with trauma on the job—he was trying to glean any tip that might help him cope with what he had seen. But, before Stuart could answer, an older cop leaned across the bar and said, ‘Bloody harden up, son.’
After that, Rex decided to keep it to himself.
‘You see, in 1979, this sort of thing was astronomical,’ he says. ‘At SAR, we had trained for aircraft crashes several times, but it was only for four- and six-seater planes, not these big things falling out of the sky. It was incomprehensible. I was literally in shock—what the hell? I couldn’t conceptualise it, couldn’t grasp a rational thought in my brain whatsoever. It was overwhelming.’
Apart from his family, nobody else in Rex’s life knew he had even been to Erebus until he was approached for an interview many years later, and he didn’t receive the New Zealand Special Service Medal (Erebus) until after the thirtieth anniversary of the crash. He mentions how people who didn’t know he’d been there would make flippant comments about the court case or the plane. On several occasions, Rex just got up and walked away. He became more introspective, felt like he had to keep a lot to himself, to suck it in, to harden up.
Following Rex’s first winter season at Scott Base, Victoria University psychologist Dr Tony Taylor arrived in Antarctica for a debrief. Tony told Rex the facts of the crash over a cuppa, but none of the base staff was offered any kind of trauma counselling.
Rex still finds it very hard when any conversation moves towards Erebus.
When the plane went down, there were already Kiwi journalists in Antarctica on other projects. Rex remembers one journo in particular, John Blumsky, who would ‘get up in your face’ at the bar at Scott Base and push for details, unfazed by the fact that all Rex and his colleagues wanted to do was unwind and have a few drinks. ‘Obnoxious and pushy. No time for him.’
He also remembers Nigel Roberts, the public information officer employed by the now defunct Department of Scientific and Industrial Research who went up to document the crash site. When Rex mentions this name, I smile inwardly; it’s familiar to me from my time as a student of political science at Victoria University, back in the days when I wanted to change the world. Many of the photos of Erebus still in circulation are Nigel’s, and Rex admits he has quite a few of them to supplement his own. Rex shot a roll of black-and-white film on his first trip to the crash site, but was so overwhelmed by the time he got back that he stuffed up the development process. He only ever got one or two good photos out of the whole film.
Rex was to spend fourteen months in total in Antarctica on that trip. Over the winter, he berated himself for not abseiling down to the crash site, for instead returning to Scott Base. It wasn’t until the spring of 1980, nine months after the accident, that Rex finally learned that the passengers and crew had died instantly from the force of the impact, their lives ended by a shockwave, and that not one person had died of exposure. My grandfather and his fellow adventurers were already dead by the time Rex and the helicopter team arrived.
There was nothing Rex could have done to save them.
However, this news came too late. As a 24-year-old left to his own devices in the aftermath of the crash, the turmoil of those dark winter months remains etched on his soul. Despite his adventurous nature, he retreated into his own endless night and has had to fight to return from the darkness ever since. It took him the better part of a decade to stop beating himself up, to realise—really realise—that the two options available to him had never actually been options at all.
Recalling that winter, he says, ‘Every wintering-over team used to participate in “House Mouse”, which is the rostered daily clean-up of Scott Base. After Erebus, the leftover body bags ended up at Scott Base and were used as rubbish bags over that subsequent winter. So, when I was on House Mouse and we had to empty the rubbish, we would be handling body bags. Even though I never worked in the clean-up operation on the hill, every ten days over the winter, like it or not …’
He doesn’t finish this sentence, but the memory hangs there, as strong as ever, still haunting him.
The impact of the Erebus Disaster on day-to-day life at Scott Base that year was massive. Most of the summer science programmes were cancelled because the helicopters were redirected from transporting scientists to supporting the recovery operation. They were short on beds—Rex estimates there were about 105 people on base, but only 70 beds—so many of the staff double-bunked and hot-bedded. The kitchen was in full-on strife, delivering five meals a day rather than the standard three in order to accommodate all the extra staff and shift workers. The mechanics and radio ops guys, kitchen staff and all the domestics were completely overworked.
Rex feels conflicted about his time there. Living, working, sleeping and socialising with the same people for months at a time brings about a particular kind of camaraderie that doesn’t exist off the ice.
‘To be accepted on a wintering-over programme you need to fit in, have good mental health, love people and be able to accommodate and consider others,’ he explains. ‘Consideration is very important. Scott Base is a tight community. There’s no privacy, and you’ve got to be tolerant of others because you’re living on top of each other. Half the base staff are on fire duty 24/7 for a week at a time, and you know at some stage you’ll be on a fire team with someone you don’t like, but you still know, when it comes to the crunch, they’ve got your back and you’ve got theirs. That’s Scott Base.’
Most of Rex’s enduring friendships are with people he has spent time with on the ice, and he still sees some of the people from that fateful summer in 1979.
‘This rescue thing is so removed from the family experience,’ he says. ‘What we did was very practical and it was quite a gruesome experience that doesn’t fit well with the family stories. I can tell my story, but I won’t ever get down to the nitty-gritty of what I saw. Even Sally doesn’t know the details of some of the images that I still see to this day. The family story needs to be told, but it is very separate to the rescue story.’
And, ensuring that he never forgets that first summer he ever spent in Antarctica, the anniversary of the disaster rolls around each November.
‘The twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of November every year, I know it. I feel it, absolutely, physically. I know days beforehand, and I know it days afterwards. It’s still very strong.’
Christmas and birthdays remain quite poignant times of the year for Rex. He stops and thinks about family. He can get overwhelmed. That’s why he likes to get away.
They say every boy needs a hero, and for Rex it was Sir Edmund Hillary. A hero helps you believe in something bigger than yourself, and Sir Ed certainly did that for Rex. He had heard that Sir Ed was supposed to have been commentating on the doomed flight, but didn’t learn until weeks later that Sir Ed’s best mate, adventurer Peter Mulgrew, was on board instead. It was through the climbers’ Himalayan adventures that Rex had developed his own passion for the mountains and the Antarctic—a passion that his time on Erebus didn’t dampen.
Nowadays, Rex sees mountaineering and search and rescue as separate roles from his work in Antarctica or with DOC. Since Erebus, he has spent several years on the board of New Zealand LandSAR, and only recently stepped down from his role as chairman. Sally is used to him being called away at all hours of the day and night, including Christmas Day. Rex is still active locally, having been on 24-hour call for more years than he cares to remember, but has stood down from ‘first call’—meaning he can finally turn off his phone at night.
For the past 20 years, Rex has often returned to Scott Base as part of the Antarctica New Zealand summer programme. He has also worked on cruise ships to Antarctica, giving lectures on field safety, operational and environmental management, and what it means to winter-over at Scott Base.
Sally still recalls the first time that Rex spoke to her about Erebus. They had already known each other for several years, and she remembers him finally admitting the guilt he carried about not abseiling out of the helicopter and down to the crash site that night.
But I don’t see anything there to regret. The way I see it, Rex was the pioneer, the one who went first, the one who went on to inform the decision-makers and train those who came after. I know how important Rex’s role was in the Erebus story.
‘You know what?’ he says, resting his fingertips on the edge of his cup, the gentle buzz of the cafe humming around us. ‘Even now, if I was faced with it again and knowing what I know now, I’d probably abseil out.’
‘Would you?’ I am shocked. ‘Would you really?’
‘Yep. Even though it was a rational decision not to—the best decision, I still think—even if it killed me, I’d probably abseil out now. Just to show them that I’d done everything I possibly could have to contribute to that situation. Even knowing full well it actually wouldn’t have contributed, particularly with the weather closing in afterwards. It would have compromised the operation because then people would have been more worried about me on the hill than actually doing the business.’
I can see that knowing he made the right decision to return to McMurdo hasn’t made it any easier for him to accept. I can tell that he would do anything to erase the darkness of that winter and the years that followed the crash.
It is not Antarctica that holds the most pain for Rex—he returns there most years for work. His pain relates to details and images, to not being able to share what he saw, to a date carved in history. The darkness that descends upon him each November is a testament to this, as he remembers the wreckage and the mountain, and wonders What if?
So I put my hand on Rex’s arm, and I tell him the truth: that I was terrified to speak with him, that I was worried I would upset him, that he was my first interview with someone from the mountain and I had no real idea what I was doing.
He laughs quietly, and meets my fears with his own admission. ‘You and me both.’
I thank him for everything he has done. For his dedication to search and rescue, and for being the night watchman as our loved ones lay lifeless on the mountain. For witnessing and reporting back what he found, even though it cost him dearly. For scouting the crash site, building the first helicopter landing pad and erecting the polar tents so the recovery teams could find my grandfather. For running the subsequent intake of staff through their safety field training. For speaking to me about a really painful part of his life—all so that I could understand more about what happened, and the lasting effect that Erebus has had on our people, on Rex and on his family.
‘I’m not sure what else to say. I think I’ve told you more than I’ve ever told anyone,’ Rex says. ‘Sally’s never heard this story.’
‘Thank you. Thank you for doing it, for being there, and thank you for talking to me.’
He looks at me. ‘Frank wasn’t just a chippy, you know. He was also a family man, he had a wife, kids, hobbies. You need to share the humanity of it. Good on you. Good luck.’
This sentiment has punctuated our conversation several times already: the family story needs to be told, but it is very separate to the rescue story. I see Rex’s point, but I am also very aware that his life became entwined with mine that day.
Rex Hendry is a part of my family story—his very presence on the mountain makes it so.
I know this meeting marks the departure point of my own Erebus journey, but today the weight of it threatens to topple me. It isn’t just the facts of Rex’s time on the mountain, but aspects of his own grief and longing, of finally accepting that the past can’t be anything more than it already is. I can feel the enormity of his story growing behind me, a mound of roughly hewn stones marking this place, piled one on top of the other, a memorial standing guard on the side of a mountain. Each stone contains a piece of Rex’s story, piled high in a cairn to honour how far he has come—stones that have now been placed one by one at my feet.