Local Paul Stokes worked alongside him as a labourer and recalls him using a spade made out of a grader blade to dig through rock. \u201cHe was a real hard man, what they used to call a diamond geezer. There was no way you could fit another callous on his hands. But nobody understood his depth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stokes lived with his \u201cguru\u201d, an elderly woman named Shirley Gillespie. \u201cOne day Roger was working next door, hard as, and Shirley said, \u2018Take that man some scones and a cup of tea.\u2019 She said, \u2018That man has a good heart.\u2019 Because the exterior appeared tough but you\u2019re often that way when you\u2019re a vulnerable child. I told him what she said and he welled up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reardon would often talk to Stokes about his hero, the US boxer Rocky Marciano, who held the world heavyweight championship from 1952 to 1956. \u201cHe never went down, he never lost. Every fight he had, he won. And I said, \u2018That\u2019s like you, Rog.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A fixture at Onetangi Beach, Reardon would go fishing in steel-capped boots then give away his entire catch. He once rowed his clapped-out dinghy, Smelly Nelly, 160km from Waiheke to Mayor Island<\/a> to raise money for the Westpac helicopter, crucial in a community with no hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n Craig Kinney met Reardon at a boozy party on the island in the 1980s. \u201cI grabbed some food with my fingers and he said [Kinney mimics Reardon\u2019s gravelly voice], \u201cYou dirty, filthy bastard! Never do that again!\u201d Kinney ran a print and design business, and helped Reardon publish his two-part autobiography Hard Yards<\/a> and illustrated children\u2019s stories Beer Belly, Grumpy Stumpy and Colly Flower Ears.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kinney feels \u201cpartly to blame\u201d for Reardon\u2019s musical oeuvre after complimenting him on his poems and suggesting they could be put to music. \u201cI organised it all and I got my friend to write this quite good music for it. We released it, and everybody loved it, because the words were kind of risqu\u00e9, like \u2018dirty Bertie\u2019 having a \u2018smelly blerty\u2019. But then it all went to his head, you see. And he started on this journey of doing more and more and more.\u201d Reardon ended up recording 14 albums featuring delightfully deranged spoken-word odes to hard graft, feijoas<\/a> and an unrequited crush.<\/p>\n Reardon sold his house on Kennedy Point Road to fund expensive recording studios, music videos and jam sessions with professional musicians. Earlier this year, he won $17,000 on Lotto, which he spent on making a double album of 46 songs. \u201cHe was always on a mission to do creative stuff and he had an incredible drive just to keep pushing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n For Kinney, he represents the last vestiges of a sanctuary for hippies, eccentrics and those less fortunate. \u201cBack in the day, Winz would virtually tell people, solo mothers, \u2018You should move to Waiheke, there\u2019s cheap rent there.\u2019 You used to be able to rent a bach for $30 a week.\u201d<\/p>\n A few residents still live on wrecked boats on the causeway but the island has moved on. \u201cA cheap bach on Waiheke now is $600 a week and it\u2019s not really healthy homes standard, and they\u2019ll probably throw you out in eight months\u2019 time. So poor people have to move over and over again.\u201d The island\u2019s police, he says, are inundated with crimes related to meth use and domestic violence.\u00a0<\/p>\nRoger Reardon\u2019s car, which he lived in. (Photo: Jenny Nicholls)<\/p>\n