Ernie Heath

Can you sing? This was the question the good-looking young man playing his guitar asked the pretty young girl. Ernie might already have had his eye on Shirley Mason. He told me he was driving trucks at the time for a Swan Hill company and an elderly lady (probably not even yet fifty, but in the eyes of 18-year-old Ernie, she seemed ‘elderly’) said “I’ll introduce you to a nice little girl from Colac”. Shirley joined Ernie on the stage, and the rest, as they say, is history. And what a history that was to be with all the usual highs and lows of fifty-eight years together. Ernie was born in Sea Lake, Victoria and as a four-year-old he was already dreaming of getting his own guitar so he could play like Tex Morton and Buddy Williams. He left school at fourteen and worked for a year to buy that guitar. By the time he was seventeen, Ernie needed a job which would support making music.