About
Magne O. Røn.

(from publisher's note to a poetry collection)

MAGNE (aka Mikael Roen)

Grew up in Norway during the German occupation in World War 2.In 1949 he ran away to join the Norwegian Merchant Navy.In 1952 he was shipwrecked in the Atlantic, fished out of the sea and takento New York by the USS Macinnack of the American Coast Guard.

In 1952, just before Christmas, he arrived in Melbourne, Australia;and deciding he'd had enough of the sea for a while.He walked ashore on 7th January 1953 with high hopes and £5.0.0,(5.pounds = about $10.00) in his pocket.

Always keen to express himself in writing, he now faced a new challenge.To master his new adopted language.As a hard rock miner, first in Mt. Beauty, Victoria on the Bogong project,then on the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric project, he came accross thewritings of Henry Lawson (a fellow country man) and fell in love with Australianpoetry as expressed by him.To overcome his language handicap, he spent years on 'formal' evening study;a habit that remained unbroken until he in 1980 could sit for, and pass, the entrancerequirements at The University of Sydney, where he studied over the next 3 years.

He now lives in semi retirement in a timber cottage he built himselfon the escarpmemt in Mt. Victoria, N.S.W. (Aust.)The western boundary path of his land was named "Henry Lawson Walk"after the poet's stay there in the 1880's

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