Born Mary Ernestine Hemmings in
Rockhampton, Queensland, she was the daughter of Robert Hemmings and Margaret "Magde" Foster-Lyman and they spent much of her early life moving up and down the coast, from
Mackay to
Thursday Island as they both had mobile professions; she was their only child. Following the completion of her schooling there she attended Stott & Hoare's Business College, Brisbane where she gained high passes in shorthand and typing skills. On completing her studies, she worked briefly in the public service (as a typist at the Department of Justice Library), and then for
Smith's Weekly, Sydney, first as the secretary to the literary editor,
J. F. Archibald, and later as a journalist and subeditor. On 30 October 1924 her son Robert was born. Rumoured to be
Robert Clyde Packer's son, who she met in her role at Smith's Weekly which he founded, although this has never been publicly acknowledged. Ernestine assumed the surname Hill after the birth to protect herself saying that her husband, Mr Hill, was either overseas or dead. and amassed a collection of over three thousand photographs in which she documenting the landscape and her encounters with Aboriginal people. In 1931 her sensationalist reporting of the discovery of gold in
The Granites, north-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, contributed to a gold rush and a stock-market boom. This rush resulted in a major failure which left many prospectors stranded and destitute, and Hill was attacked for irresponsible journalism. It is also during this period that Hill first formed a relationship with
Daisy Bates, who she first camped with a
Ooldea, South Australia in June 1932; their relationship became an ongoing one throughout the remainder of Bates' life.
AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource claims that Bates eventually confirmed that Hill did ghost-write the book. Hill then stopped travelling and worked for the
ABC from 1940 from 1944, first as the editor of the ABC Weekly's women's pages (1940-1942) and then held the position of commissioner (1941-1944). However, while this provided her with a small pension, her final years were characterised by financial and health problems and, in 1970, she returned to Brisbane to be cared for by her family and died in their care in 1972. ==Legacy==