Ernie Blackmore – May 17 2020

Ernie is a playwright and academic. He is Kamilaroi on his mother’s side and English on his father’s. Ernie left school at 15, virtually illiterate, and lived on the streets for 10 years where he developed drug and alcohol addictions. He recovered from addiction and cancer surgery in 1995 and worked in the trucking and transport industry before turning to an academic career. Ernie studied writing for theatre and film and now holds a PhD from the University of Wollongong where he is currently an Honorary Fellow. A consultative editor for Indij Readers from 2002 to 2003, his other plays include adaptations of two other Indij Readers series books: What We Count, Then and Now by Nioka Doolan et. al., illustrated by Bronwyn Bancroft, and Having Fun at School by Taminya Fisher et. al., illustrated by Paul Davis. Ernie’s other work includes the book, Speakin’ Out Blak – An Examination of Finding an “urban” Indigenous “voice” Through Contemporary Australian Theatre, written after he realised that Buckley’s Hope, originally about three Australian Aboriginal women, was fast becoming a story about two Australian white men. Ernie consequently felt compelled to resist the ‘colonising’ pressure on his work and try to establish the bona-fides of an “urban” Indigenous “voice.”

Buckley’s Hope
Australian Script Centre, 1999
80 minutes; 3 female, 4 male
In 1955, following the death of her husband, young Aboriginal woman Maree Turner reluctantly returns to an Aboriginal mission in the small town of Buckley’s Creek. When she meets and marries John Hodgson, a white man, thus breaking the unspoken rules that everyone else lives by, both black and white communities begin to self-destruct. This is not a play about ‘victims’ but rather a story that looks at the three powerful and destructive dichotomies of otherness – black/white, black/black and white/white.

In the Bush by Luke Anderson – Illustrated by Roy Kennedy
Includes play adaptation by Ernie Blackmore
Indij Readers Limited, 2003; ISBN 9780975064030
Pre-school-Primary level
Part of the For Little Fullas Series learning to read books, In the Bush is written by young Kamilaroi man, Luke Anderson, about his experiences in Cootamundra as a child. The illustrator, Roy Kennedy, grew up on Police Paddock Mission at Darlington Point and produces artworks about mission life as he remembers it.