Born on Bullardoo Station in 1956, Yamatji man, legendary actor, comedian, and Going Places presenter Ernie Dingo has been swimming in the astounding azure waters off Australia’s westernmost point since he was a nipper. The officially designated Australian National Living Treasure is accustomed to paddling side-by-side with the enormously beautiful whale sharks that graze on Ningaloo Reef’s teeniest plankton, as he does in the eye-popping first episode of the gorgeous new season of the show.
“It wasn’t my first rodeo but seeing them again is still an amazing experience all over again,” he says. “Here we are, jumping gleefully in the water because oh my god, there’s a whale shark coming, yet, about two kilometres further away in the same freaking ocean, look at that bloody tiger shark, mate, oh my god. We’re a bit fickle.”
Ernie Dingo at Ningaloo Reef in the new season of 'Going Places'. Credit: NITV and SBS
This comical switch between two very different readings of “oh my god” – ecstatic joy and (chewable) bone-deep fear – epitomises what it’s like chatting to Dingo. An endlessly eloquent orator in whose winding stories it is abundantly easy to get lost, he’s also irrepressibly funny with just the right dose of good-humoured cheek. He clearly adores his co-hosts Bianca Hunt, Rae Johnston, Aaron Fa’Aoso and new recruit, Mystery Road: Origin star Mark Coles Smith, but it is fair to say he relishes giving them a good-natured ribbing too.
Mark Coles Smith joins Ernie Dingo as a co-host in the new season of 'Going Places'. Credit: Mark Rogers / NITV and SBS
Looking back over an illustrious career that includes Dingo’s own stint in the Mystery Road franchise, , Redfern Now, Blue Heelers, Fast Forward and Crocodile Dundee II, there’s an intriguing connection to sharks lurking just below the surface. He took on the lead role of pioneering Aboriginal activist, footy player and star Robert Tudawali, a Tiwi Islander, in the 1988 SBS-produced telemovie .
“His real name was Robert Wilson, but they didn’t like the fact that he had an English name, so they asked him what his Aboriginal name was,” Dingo relays. “But he didn’t have one because he hadn’t been allowed to, so they asked him what his totem was instead, and it was the Tartuwali, or shark.”
It was meant to be. As was Dingo’s love of wandering this sunbaked continent and the great wide world beyond. “I remember when I was a kid, they were digging a trench for sewerage, and the council put this truckload of sand in the street,” he recalls. “We used to play on that sandpile that was only about a foot high. I lay down on the ground and the sand pile became the horizon, and I could touch it.”
I would think that one day, I’ll go over that horizon. I’ve been chasing them ever since I got to the edge of Australia and looked out...
This transformative moment has always stuck with Dingo. “As I would lift my head up, I’d see over the sand pile horizon and would take off into the distance. And I remember looking in whatever direction, north, south, east and west, and I would think that one day, I’ll go over that horizon. I’ve been chasing them ever since I got to the edge of Australia and looked out across the ocean.”
His childhood was full of moments like this, spurring him to explore. “In my language [Wudjadi], we have a saying “winthu wanga” which means wind walk, where you’d hear the stories that come on the breeze,” Dingo says. “The old people used to go upwind at nighttime while the kids were asleep around the campfire, and they would sing songs into the night. The wind would bring those songs down to where the kids were sleeping, and we’d wake up in the morning and have this wonderful sense of, ‘Oh, that mountain top looks really cool. We can climb that today.’ Basically, it was the old fellas putting the words into our heads so when we’d wake up, that’s all we would think about.”
The new season once again takes Ernie Dingo across the nation. Credit: NITV and SBS
Lucky for us, Dingo’s still wandering. Fronting The Great Outdoors in 1993, he’s been pursuing his love of waterways from the Yangtze River in China to the Ganges in India, the rainforest-enshrouded Amazon to the Rhein winding its way through Europe. Going Places kicked off in 2017, sweeping him around this vast continent, with the latest season sending him from Perth to the West MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia, on to Queensland’s Little Italy and up to the tropical far north. He also visits the ethereal Abrolhos Islands, where Dutch sailors made contact 150 years before the British.
“It’s an amazing story,” Dingo says. “The Dutch used to come around the bottom of Africa and ride the winds across until they came to the West Australian shoreline, using that as a turning point to head north up to what was the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.”
No matter how far he goes, Dingo’s always recognised, much to the hilarity of the show’s producers, who keep trying and failing to find somewhere he hasn’t touched. Dingo says it’s an honour to work alongside his dedicated team, especially valiant cameramen Brandon Batten and Scott Last. “For all these years, they’ve done all the film work, except for me holding a little GoPro while swimming with the whale sharks,” Dingo says. “They’re amazing and I love them to bits, capturing these beautiful stories and they’re very respectful. They really do look after me and it’s brilliant.”
As is Dingo’s melodious company. As for the wandering, he wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s all connected. “There’s a story, a songline, that starts from here in WA, goes through the centre and ends up there in the Torres Strait,” he says. “There’s a crisscross of songlines all over the country, stories and stuff. Learning that as a kid, growing up, you’d want to know where those stories go, rather than say, because I live here in my little town, this is all that matters.”
See the new 12-episode season of Going Places with Ernie Dingo at 7.30pm Thursdays on NITV and SBS. Episodes will be available to stream for free on after they air, with captions available in English and subtitles in Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.
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Going Places with Ernie Dingo
