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WARNING: This article contains the name and image of an Aboriginal person who has passed.
Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara woman Lillian Crombie has passed away, her daughter Elaine confirmed on social media.
She was 66 years old.
An all-round performer
Aunty Lillian grew up in Port Pirie in South Australia.
She was a student of acting, dance and drama.
At a young age, she trained in classical ballet at the Port Pirie Ballet School where she was the only Aboriginal girl in her class.
She did mime classes before moving into acting, and at the age of 16, moved to Sydney on a dance scholarship.
She went on to train in New York and at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and studied with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in the 80s.
Crombie played the role of ‘Bandy Legs’ in Baz Luhrmann’s movie Australia. Source: Getty / TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP
A distinguished actor, she appeared in multiple productions around the country and toured in plays overseas.
She played leading roles in Mereki the Peacemaker, Conversations with The Dead, Black Mary – Festival of Dreaming, Gunjies, Capricornia, The Cherry Pickers, Rainbow’s End and more.
Back home on screen, she appeared in television series such as The Secret Life of Us and Mystery Road and the motion picture Australia directed by Baz Luhrmann.
The film was recently adapted into a TV mini-series titled Faraway Downs.
A pioneer of the arts
In 2019, Crombie was recognised with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Equity Foundation for her contribution to the arts.
At the time playwright and artistic director Wesley Enoch described her as a trailblazer for First Nations stories to be told.
“Her amazing comic timing is legendary. Who could ever resist the way she winks an eye and flashes her smile and has you laughing while she delivers a huge life lesson,” he said.
Always eager to have her very own dance school, she set up the Lillian Crombie School of Dance and Drama which provides performing arts training for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in regional South Australia.
During a 2020
, Crombie said the school was made to give others the same opportunities she had.
“I really want them to have the same experience as I have and I want the kids to if they do love whatever they do, be a fireman, dancer, policeman, whatever.”
“You just don’t give up on your love because it’s your life. You know it’s about living it.
“It’s about experiencing it … and I think that’s why when I went to NIDA that brought the acting out of me more. I honed it and owned it and with dancing, I danced it, dancing gave me that.”
In 2015, she founded the Lillian Crombie Foundation to support Indigenous families’ travel needs for Sorry Business.
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