Joseph, when asked last week for some memories of Ellis, had this story to tell:
It was a cold winter's afternoon in 1993 just after Otago beat the British and Irish Lions at Carisbrook.
Otago lock Andy Rich had acquired a 4m rubber dinghy and he and blindside flanker Joseph decided they would use it for a diving trip to Danger Reef off Shag Point, north of Palmerston.
At midweek training they asked if any other members of the Otago team could handle a boat.
Joseph: "Ellis put his hand up and said, 'I can handle a boat. My old man owns a boat. We've always had a boat'."
"But he was actually bullshitting. He wanted to come with us because he wanted a feed of crayfish."
The trio took the boat out to the reef and tied up to the buoy of a crayfish pot and Rich and Joseph went over the side, leaving Ellis alone in the boat.
Joseph says when they resurfaced, each with a bag of crayfish, the boat and Ellis were about 50m away.
"So we yelled out to him to come and pick us up."
Ellis, says Joseph, untied the boat from the buoy before trying to start the outboard.
"And the swell had got up and the wind had got up, so as he did that the wind took him away and he couldn't get the boat going.
"And the reason he couldn't get the boat going was because he had it in gear. He didn't know how to drive a boat."
The two in the water could see what Ellis was doing wrong and yelled out.
"But the wind was strong. It took him away; headed him away back down to Karitane until we couldn't see him anymore. That's how far away he got."
The two divers were getting worried.
"Bobbing around in the water for nearly an hour and a-half, we thought we were goners.
"We had actually talked ourselves into swimming back into shore."
Then, just on dark, they heard the sound of an outboard and Ellis returned in the boat.
Joseph says the idea of spending a night in the sea off the Otago coast had been "very scary".
" ... and then he [Ellis] said to me, at the end of it, 'did you get any crayfish?' I could have smacked him right there and then."
The next night Joseph and Ellis had to make a speech in Gore at a Mataura Licensing Trust evening.
"Ellis gets up and says: 'well, you wouldn't believe it folks. I saved this guy's life'."
"That was his opening statement. He just about killed us mate.
"But that's him. Good fella. Good mate of mine."
