Returning form a recent brief trip back to Perth, I grabbed something that I'd long been meaning to read - a copy of 'Dingo - The Story of Our Mob', Sally Dingo's biography of her husband, the delicious Ernie, and his family. I've been avoiding the teev during this 'expat' phase of life, but I hear that's it's possible to get your dose of Ernie in the Great Outdoors on cable, in various parts of the globe. His beaming face is one of the kinds of thing I miss in being away from Oz. I first saw Ernie, luminous, in Jack Davis' play 'The Dreamers'. He was the lust object of a number of actress friends who'd worked with him around that time, and I went to have a gander too. I've always been full of admiration for the light touch he brings to the burden of being one of the poster boys for reassuring the non-indigenous Australian community that it can build comfortable relationships with aboriginal people. He's a sweet, remarkable, multi-talented, funny guy, and it's impossible not to be curious and want to know more about him.

And his wife's biography goes to show just what's gone into the mix, making the distinction between the guy we want badly to relate to, and the guy with the history we probably suspected (but hoped to some extent, didn't exist). It's obvious that aboriginality is not an incidental part of Ernie's identity. But just how much hard work and personal cost also goes into the effort to put the rest of us at ease, and in fact, delighting us with his charming and friendly manner, is something I often catch myself forgetting. And clearly even Sally catches herself forgetting too, with consequences that must produce all kinds of stresses. There's inevitability about the description of the difficulties Ernie and Sally face in forging a marriage of equals in circumstances of big cultural differences, regardless of the love of many people who help hold it together. The love and fun clearly count for an incredible amount. Happily for us, the story of the spiritually powerful Dingo Jim and his charismatic descendants is moving, simply told, fascinating, and, as Sally was no doubt trying to achieve, a great yarn.

I was curious to see whether 'King of the Kids' was something entirely different from 'Our Mob'. It's a cut down, re-edited version, expressed in a slightly lighter tone, put out by the same publisher. It has fewer photographs (no glossy plates) and leaves out one or two of the excruciatingly personal details that made the bigger version memorable, if painful. The good news is that, along with the cut down format, it retains the essentials of the previous incarnation, and comes at a cut down price with King of the Kids being roughly half the price of Our Mob. Small and light in the mail!

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