Ernie Dingo

 ( Living People ) 

He attended both Prospect Primary School and Geraldton High School in his hometown in Western Australia.

Dingo got his first big break in acting after moving to Perth and meeting Richard Walley, with whom he played basketball in a local team. He then went on to play state league first division for the East Perth Hawks. He completed an apprenticeship in sign writing.

As an actor, he has also appeared in many Australian television series such as Blue Heelers, The Flying Doctors, Heartbreak High and Rafferty's Rules. He appeared in the TV mini-series The Cowra Breakout (1984), A Waltz Through the Hills (1987), (for which he won an AACTA Awards for Best Actor in a Television Drama) and Kings in Grass Castles (1997), as well as co-starring with Cate Blanchett in the Australian television drama series Heartland (known as Burned Bridges in the United States).

He hosted the television program The Great Outdoors for 16 years from its beginning in 1993 to its end in 2009.

Dingo narrated the Indigenous segment of the 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony in Sydney, New South Wales.

In May 2007, Dingo appeared as one of the celebrity performers on the celebrity singing competition reality show It Takes Two. Dingo also hosted the first series of No Leave, No Life, on Seven Network.

In February 2012 Dingo and his family were featured in episode three of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) documentary series Family Confidential.

He appears in an episode of Serangoon Road, an Australian-Singaporean television drama series which premiered on 22 September 2013 on the ABC and HBO Asia. Also in 2013, Dingo plays a Vietnam veteran, a retired Army drill sergeant facing his demons in episode six of the second series of Redfern Now ("Dogs of War"). The episode was shown at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2013. In 2018 he played Keith Groves in the TV miniseries Mystery Road.

Dingo hosts the free-to-air travel show Going Places with Ernie Dingo on NITV (National Indigenous Television) and SBS. NITV and SBS

In 2022 he performed in a celebrity tribute to Australian comedian and actor Paul Hogan, the Roast of Paul Hogan, which was broadcast on Australia's Seven Network.

Ernie Dingo married Sally Butler, then a sales representative for 2Day FM, in 1989.Huntington, Patty and Rachel Brown. He has 3 daughters, Zoii Dingo, Alyssa Dingo and Wilara Dingo. "Dingo's secret daughter'. Sydney Morning Herald. 12 September 2004. The couple struggled to conceive their own children via IVF in the early 1990s and later adopted a daughter and also took care of one of Ernie's grandchildren. In his appearance on Family Confidential Dingo revealed that the adopted daughter's father was another Aboriginal actor who was Dingo's cousin, David Ngoombujarra. Dingo discovered in 2004 that he had a daughter from a brief relationship before his marriage.

Sally Dingo has authored two books about her husband and family, 2000's Ernie Dingo: King of the Kids and Dingo, The Story of our Mob in 1997. Their marriage broke down in 2011 and Dingo moved to Perth.

Dingo fathered twin boys in 2015.

Dingo is a prominent supporter of Australian rules football, and in particular the West Coast Eagles.

In 2020, Dingo toured regional Western Australia to speak to Indigenous groups, which had the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in Western Australia. This led to him receiving threats.

Dingo is a fan of basketball, and played at state level in 1973 for the Perth Wildcats. He joined the Masters sport games to play the game for Australia in 2022.

He received the AFI Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Tele feature for A Waltz Through the Hills in 1988, after being nominated the previous year for Tudawali. He has also been nominated for an AFI/AACTA Award for Best Lead Actor in a Television Drama in 1994 for Heartland and in 2013 for Redfern Now.

In August 2010, the WA Police Force announced they had opened an investigation into reports of child abuse by Dingo. It was alleged that Dingo slapped and verbally abused an 11-year-old boy at Carnarvon Primary School, and then made abusive comments singling out that particular boy while speaking at a school assembly shortly afterward. Dingo denied the claims, saying: "I deny it, but until there is an outcome I can't really talk about it." He entered a plea of not guilty by endorsement in a letter to the court and a date of 3 February 2011 was set for trial in Carnarvon. However, on 18 April 2011, following a mediation session, the assault charge was dropped and the matter formally withdrawn.

In 2010, two women from New South Wales and Victoria claimed to have engaged in affairs with Dingo. It was subsequently rumoured that Ernie and Sally were living in an open marriage for the sake of their children.

• Dingo, Sally. Dingo, The Story of our Mob. Random House Australia, 1997. .
• Dingo, Sally. Ernie Dingo: King of the Kids. Random House Australia, 2000. .