RON Morrison was a stripling 21-year-old photographer with the Newcastle Sun when he grabbed a ride on an army amphibious vehicle to Singleton and Muswellbrook to capture the awesome and devastating power of the 1955 Hunter flood.
His big press camera played up in the wet conditions, but he had a small folding camera belonging to his wife, Elizabeth, in his pocket, and it was photos from that little outfit that made it to the front page of his paper when he made it back to Newcastle four days later.
The '55 flood was a watershed moment - excuse the pun - in the lives of all who lived through it, and photos of that sodden time still have the capacity to shock.
Yet the floods had not finished with Ronald John Morrison, who died on Friday, aged 88.
For the past two years or so, Ron has been living with his son, Ken, and Ken's family at Woodburn, a hamlet on the Richmond River, 550 kilometres north of Newcastle and 11 kilometres inland from Evans Head.
Ken, a paramedic with NSW Ambulance, thought they had moved all of Ron's photos and negatives to safety, but the floodwaters turned Woodburn into a sea, and his life's work was reduced to "a sodden mess".
His sister, Janet Wilson, of Merewether, said her father struggled to comprehend the loss.
"I think it broke him," she said yesterday.
The family tried to salvage what they could, but Ken said the water was "like a tsunami" and his father had to be rescued by the SES "in a tinny" from the first floor verandah of their six-bedroom, two-storey brick home.
Ron suffered a stroke a few weeks after, and after a period in hospital he joined wife Liz in a nursing home at Maclean.
A fall, and a broken hip, followed, and after he contracted pneumonia, the doctors found he had adenocarcinoma - a cancer Ken says the doctors believe may have come from a lifelong exposure to darkroom chemicals.
Ken and Janet said their father had been cremated in a private service, but given his life in Newcastle, and the various friends and admirers the couple still had in this region, a memorial service would be held sometime next month.
Ken and Janet spoke yesterday about the love they had for their family, and the love that Ron and Liz showed them, as their only, and adopted, children.
But in recent years the Morrison family had grown, in a way, to include an honorary son, in the form of longtime Newcastle Herald writer and now independent publisher, Greg Ray, who with his co-publisher wife Sylvia has brought Ron Morrison's name to a new generation of readers.
"Greg was like another son to Dad," Janet said yesterday.
Ron's photos for The Sun and the Newcastle Morning Herald feature in various history books the Rays have published since 2010, and are regularly featured in Greg's weekend spots in the Herald.
Greg said yesterday that he became friends with the Morrisons after writing about their books, which included Newcastle Seen and Newcastle - Times Past.
"In 2017 we collaborated on Newcastle In The 1960s, which cemented our friendship even more firmly," Greg said.
"Ron's work also featured strongly in our subsequent books, Our Town Revisited and Newcastle By Itself."
"Always kind and thoughtful, they gave Sylvia and I great encouragement when we sought their advice about publishing our first book of historical photographs.
"Ron was a prolific photographer and a highly regarded teacher who was always willing to share the benefits of his wide-ranging experience.
"He was highly imaginative, as his extensive legacy of images and books shows, and also very entrepreneurial.
Greg's 2019 essay, Ron and Liz Morrison: life behind the lens, tracks their twin careers in news, business - they started their own press agency in 1959 - and academia, after both went to university as mature-age students and later taught, with Ron going on to head the communications department at Newcastle College of Advanced Education, and Liz a convocation member of University of Newcastle council for six years.
A number of Ron's books were produced with Newcastle journalist Alan Farrelly, who died in 2009.
