By Emmanuel Narokobi

I had the honour this morning of having breakfast with Australian actor Ernie Dingo. Masalai was a minor sponsor at the event organised by Leadership PNG (LPNG) and the Australian High Commission so I found myself sitting at the main table right in front of the podium with the likes of Syd Yates of the Kina Group, His Excellency, Mr. Chris Moraitis, the Australian High Commissioner to PNG, Founders of LPNG and of course Australia’s living national treasure, Ernie Dingo himself.

To be honest I was quite nervous when I was told that I could sit at table 16. I knew that I was a minor sponsor of the event but I felt extremely awkward sitting next to the Australian High Commissioner and then having Ernie Dingo calling me from across the table for the ‘Susu’ (yeah he knew what the word meant).

So what did I think of him? Well as he said it himself when he got up to speak, he loves himself and he’s a terrible showoff. But don’t think I mean it in a negative way, you see Ernie came from Western Australia from pretty much a country lifestyle and from the lack of mention of his father I am assuming that he was brought up predominantly by his mother. But it was the people who believed in him and gave him the love and respect to realise his dreams that allowed him to express himself without fear. He recalls a sports teacher by the name of Mr. Jennings who realising that Ernie could be a basketball player encouraged him to get into that sport. From what I gathered his early success at playing basketball as an 11 year oldamong adults at the time gave him a great confidence in himself and his abilities. Because for himself he truly believes that you have to honestly love yourself and honour yourself before you can take that on to the rest of the world. So Ernie continued on in his young basketball career to play all around Western Australia. But as you would have it, his basketball team mates also loved to sing and dance on the side. This lead to people paying for them to perform and for Ernie that then lead him into the show-biz star that he is today.

My first impression of him since I first discovered him as a child watching the film Storm Boy and up to now with his antics on the ‘Great Outdoors’ travel show was that he was always something of a ‘larakin’. A funny man if you will, but I can see that under all that acting, smiling and belly gripping humour is a man who has a serious message which comes across through him being a symbol of success against all the social and economic odds that may have stood in his way. The symbol he stands for is simply that all you need to get anywhere in life is to really look within yourself and to the role models around you. His mother has instilled allot of self pride in himself but he listed many great people who he had met briefly and who have influenced him. He put it this way, that we all have a bit of others in ourself. He says Kevin Rudd did a wonderful thing recently and he feels like he has a bit of Kevin in him now, because we all learn and are inspired by people around us.

Ernie went on to develop this idea of inspiration by saying that we are all able to extend the good that others begin and sometimes even take that to levels we never dreamed would be possible. But coming full circle now he pointed out that he was the only black Australian on TV and has been for a long time now. So he asked when should he give it a rest? And if he did, who would be there to take on the mantel? Who will take on his legacy or more appropriately put, who will take on the responsibility of continuing to educate and bring together the other half of Australia. He knows that he is not the only one obviously, but he fully understands that he is the most obvious one on show to the rest of the world.

Ernie’s talk about his people and his language made me realise how little I know about our ‘other’ Australian brothers. Music and Art are things we both share and use to express ourselves and Ernie suggested that it could be one way for us to learn from each other. I am obviously biased when I think of these things because my thoughts always turn from identifying art and talent and then looking at how it can be shared. So as Ernie continued to list a number of Aboriginal artists, my thoughts drifted away with ideas of Imparja TV showing PNG musical trips and tours to Australia and organising tours in PNG of cultural and art exhibitions. I do think that we can learn allot from each other in dealing with the pressures of globalisation. Not just economic globalisation but on a cultural level as well and I don’t mean just for Aboriginals and PNG’eans alone but the whole of the Pacific as well.

I have been to Australia many times in my life and I have lived there as well and Ernie has only made me ponder more about a vast part of his country which seems alien to me and is waiting to be discovered. And all because Ernie bothered to love himself a little more than the next bloke with RM Williams in Western Australia.