Ronald Hugh Morrieson

'We were an average group of 12 to 14 year-olds having tons of fun on our bicycles,' he says of their teenage years. 'Morrieson's most valued possession was a Rudd Whitworth, the crème de la crème of bikes. We used to ride all over the place but we never did anything nasty. We never broke letterboxes or anything like that. It was only later in life we got in trouble with the cops.'

'I drank a lot at his place,' Robinson grins. 'But not what he made. Ron used to organise the beer from the local brewery in sugar sacks that held 4 dozen big bottles of beer. OC (Octopus Clamp) was one and VC (Victoria Cross) was the other made at the Hawera Brewery. Octopus Clamp came from a hold used by wrestler Lofty Bloomfield, a hero of Ron's.'

Along with a talent for music, Morrieson honed his amateur wrestling skills. Robinson remembers a night many years down the track when Morrieson treated his old mates to a social demonstration. 'My God! What a bloody performance. He got this school teacher and gave him 'an aerial helicopter.' Lifted him up, swung him round and round and threw him down on the floor, then lifted him up on his knees and dumped him. Poor fellow, he drank a bottle of brandy that night, and the next day drove the school bus, and he had to keep stopping to have a throw-up.'

He says Morrieson was seriously into billiards and snooker and even though playing for money was illegal, he suspects his friend made 'quite a lot' off his cue. 'We used to play a lot, Ron and I. He was far better than I because he didn't work. He didn't ever have a job. He spent yonks up in that pool room.'


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Ronald Hugh Morrieson: A BiographyJulia Millen

Writer, musician, music teacher, Morrieson was also known as a drunken bum, a wastrel, a womaniser and a spiv. He played bass in dance bands and drank in pubs around Taranaki in the 1950s and this became the material for his novels. In life, as in his remarkable literature, he was an original.