Andre Morris--HA With A Vancouver Twist--Mostly Australian
Greg Carr
Doug Parrington
13Oct07
ANDRE Morris always has lived life in the very, very fast lane.
He has married seven times. He has made millions of dollars. He has sailed
the world's oceans, raced fast cars and overcome a serious dalliance with
cocaine.
Morris is a tearaway boy who became a tearaway man, an audacious deal-maker
who acquired some of his native cunning from years of wild play in the
mangrove swamps of Brisbane's northern suburbs.
His current vocation is that of Mount Tamborine cheese maker but don't
expect him to sit still for too long. He's already setting up a micro
brewery at one end of the mountain's Gallery Walk and he has real estate
deals happening up around Kilcoy.
Morris's mind is always ticking over.
He made a pile of money from taking the body lotion and cosmetics company
Lush to North America, but success always was destined to come to this
financial adventurer, risk-taker and rule-breaker.
Morris's rebellious nature is probably in his genes. His father Alex, a
feisty Scot and an officer in the British merchant navy, originally came to
Australia by jumping ship in Tasmania in the mid-1950s.
It seems Alex Morris was to set the scene for an unconventional life for his
son: In his initial five years of absenteeism in Australia, he met and
married Yvonne and had four children Alex Jr, Robert, Andre and Marcus.
Andre was born on Stradbroke Island while his father was the engineer
running the island's power station at Dunwich.
When the family moved to the Brisbane bay suburb of Shorncliffe, the Morris
boys went native. On weekends they would take off for the bush, ranging far
and wide through the mangrove swamps and taking on the characteristics of a
mini-tribe.
They would smear their faces with foul-smelling mud, fashion spears out of
grass tree stalks, and on a couple of occasions launched tribal `assaults'
with the spears on passenger railway carriages slowing for arrival at
Shorncliffe station.
"We were trouble, that's for sure," says Morris. "We chased cows, wandered
through the wildest parts of what is now the Boondall Wetlands, occasionally
caught the train (never paying the fare) and generally ran amok. We were
mad."
Their free-ranging feral lifestyle extended to the local rubbish tip at
Sandgate. According to Andre Morris, the urchin boys reclaimed discarded
bicycles, `my first Monopoly board game' and even packets of out-of-date
biscuits dumped by supermarkets.
"We dined out on those for weeks," says Morris.
They also spent many hours at the local golf course, diving in creeks and
ponds for lost balls and selling the balls back to golfers.
The impoverished childhood and the swamp adventures clearly did the boys no
harm. If anything, the experience was instructive, making them tough,
enterprising and self-reliant.
"By the time I was eight I was a paper boy, selling the Brisbane Telegraph
afternoon newspaper to drinkers at three pubs, and I soon learned it was the
tips rather than the sales that made it worthwhile," says Morris. "If the
paper was fivepence, the customers would usually give you a sixpence and you
could keep the change. I was also doing home deliveries on my bike (salvaged
from the dump) so I was making good money."
Morris's life as a wild child soon had him in trouble with school
authorities.
He estimates he was given the cane once a week for six years at Shorncliffe
Primary School by a man he knows as Mr Jayes.
"He was a lovely man, and deep down he really loved me but he was trying to
keep control in his school. Later, in my 20s, when I was selling kangaroo
meat door-to-door in the Sandgate area, I met him again and we got along
fine. There were no grudges."
If Mr Jayes thought he had tamed Andre Morris, he was sadly mistaken.
By the time Morris was enrolled at Sandgate High School, his hatred for
educational institutions had set solid.
"There I was, short haircut, poncy uniform and wearing charity shop shoes
that were not only one size too small but were white shoes painted black by
my mother. I had largely avoided wearing shoes up to this point. I decided
then and there, I detested school," says Morris.
Even when the Morris family moved to Palmwoods and later to Yandina in the
Sunshine Coast Hinterland, young Andre resented school and yearned for the
freedom of his knockabout years.
He was good at his subjects, being in the top levels of his class in
English, science and geography, but he remained non-compliant.
"I just didn't fit in," he says.
"I hated team sports and I used to go surfing whenever I could.
"When I was 15, I grabbed my surfboard, hitchhiked to Tweed Heads, and from
there got a lift by a Lindsay Brothers truck to Ballina where I lived rough,
ate hamburgers and did some surfing.
"I wrote a letter to my mum, then rang her we both cried and after 10 days
out in the world, I went back home."
Life at home deteriorated. Morris's parents parted after constant arguments
about money and the four boys and Yvonne moved out of the family orange and
avocado farm at Yandina into a caravan park at Maroochydore for a temporary
life in a tent.
"Me and my brothers thought it was great. We were back in the adventure of
living outdoors, and it lasted for two months," he says.
But reality hit home, the mother and children moved into a rented house in
Nambour, and Andre Morris took up a carpentry apprenticeship.
Soon after, a yearning for the greater world came calling, and at 18, Morris
took off for the bright lights of Sydney.
The speed of his life thereafter is a blur.
He landed a job as a carpenter (but admits he was not qualified) on the
construction of Centrepoint Tower, hooked up with a 16-year-old Croatian
girl called Lea, and after just six months married her.
The teenage Mr and Mrs Morris were footloose and fancy free. They bought a
beach buggy and tent and struck out for Mackay, surviving on the dole and
living a life of unparalleled freedom.
Morris scored a job cladding houses in Mackay, earning enough money to buy
his next vehicle for adventure, a yacht for $2500.
The trouble is, the 32-foot yacht was at the bottom of Mackay Harbour. It
had been sunk for two months.
But Morris had a plan. Every afternoon after work, he would swim out to the
vessel with tyre bladders and push them into the hull. Then he hired another
boat with a compressor, attached the air lines to the tubes, refloated his
pride and joy, and called on the local fire brigade to pump out the
remaining water.
For the first time in his life, Morris had a home.
The electrics of the yacht were ruined, and the engine had been ruined by
water, but otherwise the vessel was seaworthy. He was to discover later that
the yacht had sunk only because the cock on the toilet had malfunctioned,
allowing the seawater to rush in.
He and Lea were to spend the next two months repairing the vessel, rewiring
it and stepping in a new mast but not bothering to install a new engine.
"I sold the beach buggy and trailer, but soon realised that I had to learn
how to sail, with or without an engine," he says.
"So one morning we just took off, with only a compass and a chart, to learn
how it was done.
"We has no lights or other navigational equipment not even a tide book and
we sailed for miles out to sea, eventually anchoring near what we thought
was a little island.
"But in the middle of the night, we heard this banging against the hull, and
when we looked out in the morning, we found the falling tide had left us
stranded right in the middle of a coral reef.
"So when the tide refloated us, I simply read the compass in reverse and
found our way back to port. That was the extent of my navigation education."
Encouraged by his newfound seamanship, Morris and his wife set out for
Rockhampton where he quite confidently passed himself off as a shipwright.
He won work caulking the hulls of ferries, earning good money, and then, by
chance, made a one-off 'fortune' of $10,000 by building a set of bunks for a
20,000-tonne freighter.
"No one else wanted to do the job, and the master of the vessel was
desperate. It proved to me that if you're willing to do the work, you can
make a lot of money," says Morris.
This was more money than Morris had ever had. For the first time in his
life, he had a home and security, and he made the most of it.
He and Lea sailed to Cairns, sold the boat for $13,000, and the first thing
he did was buy a Jaguar XJ-6 for $7500 from a local policeman. As a
self-made man, he drove triumphantly south to see his dad at Nambour.
But his enterprising spirit was just starting to warm up. He bought a
double-decker bus in Yandina, kitted it out with a bathroom and bedroom
upstairs and living room downstairs, and used it to set up a business
ferrying party-goers between Mooloolaba and Buderim.
At the same time, he was working as a waiter in Fronds restaurant in
Mooloolaba.
He bought another boat, a 46-foot steel ketch without a mast for $4500, made
it seaworthy, and sailed it to Brisbane to sell for a tidy profit.
In the meantime, Morris answered the call of the wild once more by taking
a road holiday to Cape Tribulation with Lea in an old yellow Valiant ute.
The back window of the ute's cabin was knocked out so he could occasionally
reach into the back tray for beers as they drove along.
But this was to be their last adventure together.
"We were finished," says Morris.
"We kind of just fizzled out, and the marriage ended."
Back in Brisbane, Morris worked for a while as a roofing contractor but then
met a man who was to change his life and take it up a gear.
The 65-year-old man's name was Eddie Bomfield, a larger-than-life Canadian
who lived in a Port Office apartment and who dabbled in venture capital and
stocks.
"Eddie taught me possibilities. Before I knew it, I had bought a black suit
and was carrying a briefcase -- which had nothing in it and was selling
seed stock to things like fish farms. I was suddenly a businessman," says
Morris.
Then Eddie suddenly disappeared. So Morris, suspicious about the background
of his new business mentor, bought an airline ticket and headed off for
Canada to find out if his rotund friend was actually legit.
"Halfway through the journey to Canada, in a Honolulu hotel, I picked up a
book about the life of a stockbroker, and I studied it," says Morris.
"By the time I arrived in Vancouver, I was a stockbroker. I was a trader."
Thinking on his feet, Morris on his arrival in Canada immediately took up a
job as a stockbroker, even though -- like his earlier ruses in carpentry and
shipwright work he was not qualified.
"After 10 minutes on the trading floor, I was into it and lovin' it. The
only trouble is, I didn't have a work permit and I didn't have any
qualifications," says Morris.
As with many times in his life, business and personal enterprises took
Morris down an unseen path in 1985.
He met a Vancouver waitress called Lindsay who, on the promise of an
adventure, happily accompanied him on a trip to Sydney when he returned to
become a legitimate commodities trader.
"We both came back. I sat for an exam, failed miserably, but I didn't tell
anybody," says Morris.
Morris and Lindsay returned to Canada, and Morris engrossed himself for the
next two years in the business of forward selling gold.
In that time he married Lindsay and then had to remarry her when it was
realised his former marriage to Lea had not legally ended. Not that it
mattered much; only months after they were properly married, Morris and
Lindsay split up.
Morris declines to talk about all his marriages.
"Nah, there's no point revisiting them. Let's not go there," he says.
But he will talk about Victoria, a German wine heiress who became wife No.
3. Their relationship meant leaving Vancouver and Morris's job as a grain
trader for six months and living close to Victoria's parents in the
wine-growing district of Wiesbaden near Frankfurt.
Morris concedes the marriage had its financial benefits; Victoria's parents
gave them a house in Vancouver as a wedding present.
Never one for a predictable life, Morris then bought a $2 million
maxi-yacht, called Swany, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and set up a charter
business ferrying tourists around the Caribbean, principally around the
island of Mustique, playground to the rich and famous.
But Victoria's parents were deeply unhappy about their daughter being on the
ocean waves and, at every opportunity, urged her to return to Germany.
That's exactly what she did.
Morris set off in pursuit, sailing from the Caribbean to Europe to look for
her, without success. So he turned around and sailed back to Vancouver, only
to discover Victoria living in the city that had been their home together.
The marriage quickly ended.
It was not long before Morris discovered a new passion Russia and again he
drew ideas for his next adventure from a book.
He was inspired by Edward Rutherfurd's novel Russka and decided, in 1990, to
find out about the mysterious country for himself.
"It was a time in my life when I had lost interest in trading and I didn't
know what to do with my life," says Morris.
"So I shoved $25,000 in my jeans pocket, flew to Paris and then took off for
Russia."
At this point, Morris becomes a little less willing to divulge details other
than to say that he learned fluent Russian, a business deal went bad, and he
left Russia after one-and-a-half years with his life intact but his money
gone.
"Yeah, it got a bit tricky," he says.
The resilient stockbroker landed back in Vancouver so short of cash that he
had to sleep on a friend's couch.
But with the good fortune of a man who goes at life full tilt, Morris
discovered by chance that thousands of 60-cent sleeper options he held in a
diamond company called Dentonia Resources had skyrocketed in value while he
had been away. He took up the options, sold the shares, and made a cool
$800,000.
And in true Morris style, he immediately went out and bought a new red
Lotus.
At about the same time, he decided he wanted to be an oil tycoon and that's
exactly what he did. He bought a shelf company called Wedgewood for
$250,000, raised $10 million through a Houston bank, started drilling works
and achieved some promising results.
He sold the company, walked away with millions and immediately bought a gold
Rolex as a self-reward.
The part of his fast and furious life involved, naturally, another woman.
With his red Lotus and his ability to speak Russian, he hooked up with a
Ukranian woman called Ira in Vancouver.
Ira and Morris married amid a whirlwind romance, but after a year, Morris
began to discover some disturbing information about her.
"I came back to our apartment one day and there was this huge bag of pistols
in a cupboard. I'd also been asked quietly by police why the hell was I with
this woman, since she was working for the Hell's Angels. What? I was
shocked, and I was scared. After that, I got outta there as fast as I could.
That was a dangerous scene."
(Greg--A lot of women are involved with HAMC. Their first loyalty is to the
club not their boyfriend, family, friends, religion or anything else. Same
for the men. Women and ppl who don't stick out often carry drugs and weapons
for ppl in the gang. Lucky he had recieved a head up by the police about
this gangster woman.)
Not surprisingly, the marriage soon dissolved.
With his new-found riches from the oil deal, he branched out from his normal
pursuits as a stock trader. He began dabbling in land in Newfoundland,
Canada, and bought a travel magazine.
"I always wanted to be a journalist and this was a way of short-cutting the
process. As owner of the magazine, I also became editor," he says.
About this time, he began a relationship with Meredith Brown, a beautiful
blonde trainee actress whom he had met while she was working as a hostess at
a micro brewery in Vancouver.
Meredith's background made her vastly different from anyone Morris had ever
known before. She was the daughter of a university lecturer (at Simon Fraser
University in Vancouver), and had grown up among the Kwakiutl native tribes
of Quadra Island, near Vancouver Island.
She was someone who had her feet firmly on the ground.
The two took an extended holiday together a $50,000 travel editor's rail
trip across Africa from Dar-e-Salaam to Cape Town and then visited England.
But it was in London that fate again barged into Morris's life.
Morris was walking down King's Road and when he came to No. 123, he noticed
what he thought was a huge block of cheese in a display window.
Having ambitions to one day become a cheese-maker, his curiosity drove him
inside and he started asking questions.
In fact, the block was a huge piece of soap and the shop he had entered was
the outlet for Lush, the handmade natural cosmetics makers.
So began his next huge commercial adventure, the largest of his life.
He took samples of Lush products back to Vancouver, put together a business
plan to take Lush to North America (Lush at the time had its British factory
in Poole, Dorset), flew back to Britain and sealed the deal.
He rented out vacant commercial premises on the outskirts of Vancouver,
fitted it out himself within three months (using his old carpentry skills),
and opened the doors.
"I became a bit wobbly about the chances of success. I thought to myself at
one time `this might not work'," he says.
He need not have worried. On opening day, customers were lined up down the
street.
Lush has since become a worldwide conglomerate, with more than 370 outlets
in 47 countries throughout the world.
Morris was CEO of Lush in North America and began subjecting himself to a
cruel and dangerous work schedule.
"I seemed to be working 24 hours a day, I wasn't seeing Meredith enough, and
I ended up doing way too much drugs," says Morris.
"In the business environment of the time, it was normal. It was not unusual
for a meeting to be held with a kilo of cocaine sitting on the desk. But you
know what? It was screwing us. I was either going to die or lose my family.
"I did it for three-and-a-half years, I was CEO of 176 companies at the
time, and somehow I survived. I was never busted."
Finally, it was Meredith who put her foot down.
"I gave him the ultimatum: Get off the stuff, or that's it. I'm gone," says
Meredith.
The decision was quick. Morris sold up, the family caught a plane (their
daughter Sienna had been born in 1996), and soon were on the other side of
the world, in New Zealand.
"I've never touched the stuff (cocaine) since," says Morris.
In Auckland, Morris bought a 78-foot ketch for $1.35 million, called it
Sam's Toybox, and he and his family spent the next two-and-a-half years
treating the world's oceans as their playground.
Apart from buying, restoring and managing a 20-cottage resort in Anguilla in
the West Indies for seven months, they wandered the globe and finally
settled at Palma, Spain, in 2001.
After the catastrophic events of September 11 in America, they resolved to
set up a new life away from trading floors, away from danger and away from
a mad life.
Australia was to be their new promised land.
Morris sold Sam's Toybox in Spain for $2.1 million and started scouring the
internet for southeast Queensland properties. He settled on a 81ha farm at
Kilcoy.
(Greg--He admits to moving a kilo of cocaine at a time, to having a cache of
pistols at one time and being in a relationship with a woman the police told
him was HAMC. He now lives on a 81ha farm. I think he might still be HA :-)
No leaving the club or we will gang rape you and your daughter. ha of course
often stands for Hell's Angels and 81 is their favourite number.)
In Morris's way of instantly becoming whatever he wants to be like a
carpenter, stockbroker, oil tycoon and ocean sailor he instantly took on
the persona of a farmer.
"I had the check shirt, the R.M. Williams big hat, the jeep, four jack
russell dogs and a quad bike," says Morris.
"Mate, I was a fair dinkum man on the land."
The trouble is, Meredith wasn't too keen on being the woman on the land.
After a year of social isolation `I was like a fish out of water and
fighting to keep my sanity' she announced to Morris she was leaving, packed
up and went to stay with friends at Main Beach on the Gold Coast.
A week later, Morris pursued her, they agreed to start a new life at Mount
Tamborine and in 2004 bought the Jola cheese dairy farm in Beacon Road.
Now everyone is happily settled at what is called Witches Chase Cheese
Company at least that is so for Meredith, Sienna and 7-month-old baby
Montana.
Morris, a man of seemingly perpetual motion, is juggling many projects at
once.
Not only is he running the cheese factory, he also is in the midst of
building a brewery using equipment bought from advertising guru John
Singleton's former Bluetongue brewery in the Hunter Valley. He also has
283ha at Kilcoy he is subdividing even driving a bulldozer himself to build
the roads and in his spare time he drives a 240km/h road racer. (He
competed in the support races at Bathurst last weekend but was unplaced.)
"I always have to have a project. I'm easily bored if I don't have something
to do," says Morris.
The bright orange Lotus Exige, festooned with Witches Chase Cheese signs and
screaming around the Bathurst circuit, sums up Morris perfectly. For him,
life is only about the fast lane.
(Greg--Sounds like it is fun and criminal. Despite great wealth not one
mention of any charity work. Lush does charitable work but I can't find any
confirmation he is still with the company.)
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2007/10/13/3736_print_friendly.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Read and obey the Bible. Yu'shua died on the cross for our sins, He rose
again and walked the earth. We are awaiting the Third Coming aka The Day Of
Judgment.
Sheep are extremely fluffy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4NEbU_YkZw#gAhmzK_HQgc
bob_daw
"Greg Carr" <greg...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:k1eSi.79786$Da.40091@pd7urf1no...
>
>>> ... You seem to loath homosexuals and their
>>> unsanitary sexual behaviours. I merely want the law changed so they are
>>> executed after a fair trial...
Beware when reading this man's posts, he is a vile, disgusting, perverted
psychopath. He may have lucid moments, but don't mistake him for a sane
person.
Greg Carr considers himself a good christian. He feels it's his duty to
spread the word of his bible - that all gays should be killed.
This man is unbalanced and should not be taken lightly. He is not joking.
Harry 'Snapper' Organ
wrote in aus.general:
>
>Beware when reading this man's posts, he is a vile, disgusting, perverted
>psychopath. He may have lucid moments, but don't mistake him for a sane
>person.
Isn't that just another way of saying that he is a regular Usenet
poster?
Regards
Harold
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum - Lucretius
Greg Carr
think the poster works for them as a prostitute.
--
Read and obey the Bible. Yu'shua died on the cross for our sins, He rose
again and walked the earth. We are awaiting the Third Coming aka The Day Of
Judgment.
Sheep are extremely fluffy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4NEbU_YkZw#gAhmzK_HQgc
"Harry 'Snapper' Organ" <Ha...@memento.mori.com> wrote in message
news:vekvh3lakkpsnhlet...@4ax.com...
massages...@yahoo.ca
This is Ira, his Ukrainian "gangster wife". It looks like that the writer is an idiot too.
Greg Carr
> You can take the boy out of jungle, but not jungle out the boy :)
> This is Ira, his Ukrainian "gangster wife". It looks like that the writer is an idiot too.
I hope the Ukranians are able to drive out the insurgents and Russians in Eastern Ukraine.
================================================================================
me (Greg Carr change)
6:52 AM (12 hours ago)
Tom Strenja is a low level HAMC goof and his Dad is a HAMC associate. He has threatened me and my family with death a number of times. He was born in Croatia as well as his Dad and hopefully after Tom does his time they will be deported. He is a lot smaller than he looks because of all his puffy clothing. He is the smallest HA adult I have ever encountered. Thanks to the media and Eric from USENET van.general for bringing this to my attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMv_9Qf0I0I&t=331s
If anyone of you HA guys want to make some money get Tom a property of HAMC tattoo with a black lock on his hand and I will give you 10,000 dollars and 5k donation to AIM. Offer open to anyone. If you know where that Caucasian idiot who had that tattoo in 2007 at the Gathering Place Community Center at 609 Helmcken St in Vancouver I would appreciate any info.
sienna.aliv...@gmail.com
This clipping was taken from a Newspaper article done on my parents 12 years ago, and I have no idea how you've managed to relate my Dad back to the Hells Angels or where the original post of this actually came from but I have the Newspaper Article at home, and no where is that group mentioned.
Greg Carr
> I'm not even sure how I stumbled across this but I felt compelled to post a response.
>
> This clipping was taken from a Newspaper article done on my parents 12 years ago, and I have no idea how you've managed to relate my Dad back to the Hells Angels or where the original post of this actually came from but I have the Newspaper Article at home, and no where is that group mentioned.
sienna.aliv...@gmail.com
Greg Carr
> And where do you fit into this? Please elaborate