Acknowledgments

There are many people to whom I owe much in the preparation of this book. First, there are Australia’s Himalayan climbers themselves, who have spent much time telling me their stories. Those with whom I talked—either in person or over the telephone—with whom I corresponded or who commented on early drafts of the manuscript include Brian Agnew, Peter Allen, Don Baldwin, Ken Baldwin, Paul Bayne, Geof Bartram, Austin Brookes, Dorothy Brown, Dot Butler, John Cashman, Jonathan Chester, Greg Child, Peter Cocker, Steve Colman, Pat Cullinan, Warwick Deacock, Michael Dillon, John Finnigan, Jo Flood, Peter Gration, , , Andy Henderson, Graeme Hill, Theo Hooy, Richard Howes, Peter Lambert, Mark Lemaire, Geoff Little, Tim Macartney-Snape, Roddy Mackenzie, Terry McCullagh, Rob Mitchell, Colin Monteath, Rick Moor, Peter Morris, , , , Bill Packard, Phil Pitham, Colin Putt, John Retchford, Michael Rheinberger, Andrew Rothfield, Ben Sandilands, Fritz Schaumburg, James Strohfeldt, Jim Truscott, Jim van Gelder, Ray Vran, John Wanless, Geoff Wayatt and . The following climbers provided the photographs reproduced in this book: Peter Allen, Ken Baldwin, Dorothy Brown, Graham Budd, Warwick Deacock, Michael Groom, Tim Macartney-Snape, Brigitte Muir, Jon Stephenson, Geoff Wayatt and Zac Zaharias. Special thanks go to Zac Zaharias, who has carefully compiled the tables of Australian Himalayan climbing that appear in the appendix at the end of this book. These tables represent the most complete, up-to-date record of Australian mountaineering in the great ranges of Asia. Furthermore, I am grateful to Wild magazine for their permission to use in these tables information that first appeared in Wild. In addition, thanks go to six climbers who helped me with the description and analysis of the Australian Bicentennial Everest Expedition (ABEE). This was a particularly difficult expedition to write about and I am grateful to Pat Cullinan, Peter Lambert, Terry McCullagh, Michael Rheinberger, Jim Truscott and Zac Zaharias for taking the time to give me detailed comments on an early draft.

xiii Himalayan Dreaming

Two other climbers—Lincoln Hall and Greg Child—deserve special acknowledgment for their writing as well as their climbing abilities. Both are superb writers—the equal of any climbing authors anywhere in the world—and I can highly recommend their books as excellent accounts of Himalayan mountaineering. I am grateful to them, and others, for allowing me to quote extensively from their works at several points in this book. This has given the book an immediacy and liveliness it otherwise would have lacked. Also, I am grateful to Chris Baxter, editor of Wild magazine, for allowing me to use several extensive quotes from articles that have appeared in Wild over the years. Wild is an excellent source of information on Australian Himalayan climbing; its breadth of coverage and accuracy of reporting have made my research task easier. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my wife, Carrie, and my daughter, Sonja. Carrie played a large part in the development of the initial idea for this book— something she has no doubt regretted on many occasions! She has had to endure many evenings with a house full of climbers spinning yarns and emptying bottles of wine and many hours with an uncommunicative husband hunched over a keyboard. In addition, she has put in many hard hours herself turning my assaults on the word-processing system into something legible.

xiv This text is taken from Himalayan Dreaming: Australian mountaineering in the great ranges of Asia, 1922–1990, by Will Steffen, published 2017 by ANU Press, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.