He first came to Bega 44 years ago as a 19 year old on a two week holiday from Deniliquin and was so enamoured of the place that he turned his back on his motor mechanic's trade and accepted a job truck driving.

He did that for a couple of years, making the 11 hour trip back to Deni every fortnight to see his family and his girlfriend, Denise, who later became his wife.

Then he returned to mechanics when he took a job with the local Volkswagen, Volvo and International dealer, Cogan and Coleman.

This was when he became the local VW expert, a tag he has retained for more than 40 years,

His reputation with VWs became more entrenched when he started his own business 29 years ago.

Shortly after arriving in Bega Ernie joined the local town fire brigade, something that had fascinated him since he was a was a small boy.

He also saw it as a way to contribute to his new community and as the years went on, he became more and more involved.

In 37 years with the brigade he spend 18 years as deputy captain to Sid Rood and then the last five years as captain after Sid's retirement.

Besides fighting fires day and night he has also spent a lot of time giving talks to children and adults on the precautions to take to avoid fires and what to do should a fire occur.

"That is a very satisfying part of the job," he said. "You don't know how many fires you may have prevented or the lives your lectures may have saved."

He also "chased fire brigade championships all over the State", learnt a lot and had a lot of fun over the years.

When Ernie was growing up he learnt to dance and attending dances in Echuca was a highlight of his courtship of Denise.

When they married and she moved to Bega they continued to attend cabaret dances, travelling to centres from Eden to Tilba most weekends until the children, Vicki and Stephen, came along.

The dancing shoes were put away until the children were grown and Ernie and Denise began dancing again.

Then 14 years ago, they were asked to teach the St Patrick's debs and their partners to dance and that is something they have done every year since, as well as other debs in Bega, Tathra and Merimbula.

Teaching is something Ernie obviously enjoys.

In his early days in Bega he helped Lucy Reeves and June Royal teach children to swim and then, when he joined Apex, he persuaded the club to take on the swimming lessons as a project, which it did for the next nine years.

In recent years, Ernie has taken on another project - growing lavender on his sheep property at Bimbaya.

He planted 4,500 plants and last year he had his first harvest - 15 wool packs full of flowers which he then distilled with the Bombala Lavender Co-operative to make oil.

He plans to do his second harvest next week.

Ernie's life has slowed down marginally since he "moved into retirement mode" last year.

His son-in-law, Gerard Hanscombe, has taken over the business but Ernie is still much in demand by his old VW customers.

However, they will have to learn to do without him because Ernie and Denise are moving back to Deniliquin later this year - "we have a couple of deb balls to do first," he said.

With them they will take many happy memories of their time in Bega, plus eight Volkswagens destined for restoration in Ernie's "retirement".

What they will leave behind will be a community that will be poorer for their loss.

"We'll be back," Ernie said.

"We have an on-site van at Tathra and two terrific grand kids, Gemma and Ben, so we'll be back often," he said.