People Australia

Ernest Briemle, 1937

Workers Weekly (Sydney), 16 July 1937, p 1

Ernest Paul (Ernie) Briemle (1894-1990), wharf labourer, militant socialist and gaoled trade unionist 

Birth: 1894 in Zurich, Switzerland, son of Xavier Briemle, gardener, and Sophie, née Boser. Marriage: 13 October 1944 at District Registrar’s office, Annandale, Sydney, New South Wales, to a divorcee Ellen Krasnik, née Kurinoff (d.1972), who had been born in Nijni, Udinsk, Siberia, Russia. Death: 1 February 1990 at Mater Misericordiae hospital, Waratah, Newcastle, aged 96. 

• Arrived in Sydney, NSW, aged 18, as a fireman, aboard the Hamburg, on 25 November 1911. Spent 11 years as itinerant labourer in Queensland, then moved to Sydney where he worked as a wharfie.
• 1928 he shifted to Wollongong. Most prominent radical among Wollongong’s unemployed during Great Depression. Militant socialist.
• In 1915 he was arrested and convicted for breaching War Precautions Act, sentenced to three months imprisonment.
• Active member of the Waterside Workers’ Federation, Wollongong; regarded by employers as ‘a menace’. In 1931 he was involved in Bulli riot and arrested. Criticised judge for ‘being biased to (sic) working-class principles’.
• Assaulted by New Guard in 1932. Ernie was well-known for his work for Spanish Relief.
• Naturalised in 1940.
• In later years a retired widower, lived at Nelson Bay, NSW.
• Cause of death lactic acidosis, mesenteric ischaemia.

Sources
Len Richardson, The bitter years: Wollongong during the Great Depression (Sydney, 1984)