Back in the old days of 1973-4

I have been told by someone who was there that the Auckland Town Hall had a exhibition and sale of Nepalese crafts collected by the Hillary Family to raise money for charity or something. Anyway trying to find anything online about it has come to a dead stop. The actual events were pretty big I'm told, people everywhere with no room to move. So who remembers this and what can you tell me about it. I have a painted mask from that exhibition sitting here in my hot hands.

Didn't go, those were crazy hazy wonderful days
But didn't Ed Hillary raise money for schools to be built .... an airfield .... maybe hospitals too in Nepal.....
hopefully that might help you when you search. Good luck.

My cousins Simon and Marion are doctors who worked for a year or so at the hospital Ed Hillary established at Khunde in Nepal. I can try and track down where in the world they are now and we could work back from there. They were both working in Thames when I last saw them in the mid 1980s.

I was in Kathmandu for a week or so early in 1981 and was greeted warmly as a NZer because Sir Ed was held in such high regard. This from Peter Hillary's website http://www.peterhillary.com/giving-back/ : "Ed Hillary built and ran 42 schools, hospitals and medical clinics in the Mt Everest region."

AuckMus have Ed Hillary's papers as MS 2010/1 Hillary, Sir Edmund, 1919-2008. Personal papers including "69 B18 F7 Magazines and newspaper clippings 50’s 60’s and 70’s Open access" Might be worth a trawl?

The Khunde hospital was set up with funding from the Auckland Lions Club so that could be another avenue to pursue?

My Brother was five at the time and remembers the event well as he was the only one of us kids old enough to go. He has told me there were many smaller masks, but not many of the larger ones, I will post an image soon. He also said there was more than one exhibition. Anyway I will take a photo soon. The dates of 1973-74 are not necessarily correct, but it was around that period. Shortly before the plane crash.

The Ed Hillary papers have a lot of material from the 1960s and 1970s and I think the Khunde hospital was one of Sir Ed's earliest ventures: "Sir Edmund Hillary built the Kunde Hospital in 1965-66 with the assistance of the Lion’s Club of Auckland, New Zealand, and Sir Edmund’s friends who were working in Nepal as part of the Himalayan Trust. The New Zealand Government contributed a limited amount financially to this project.

The Himalayan Trust funded, operated and administered the Hospital from 1966 to 1976 (usually husband and wife doctor teams)." from http://www.thesiredmundhillaryfoundation.ca/Projects.26.0.html

That gives you a period of a only decade to scour off line sources for info about the Hillarys and Nepal.