[3] Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts at Flinders University, described it as being "about the mission experience for Indigenous Australians, and the indignity, injustice and often outright exploitation that came from being 'protected' by white Australians with little knowledge and less interest in the traditional culture their arrival had near-fatally disrupted", and the style as "a beautifully nuanced realism".
[5] The play was first performed at the Black Theatre Arts and Culture Centre in Redfern on 12 January 1975, directed by Bob Maza.
[10] In 1983 Merritt co-wrote a film noir with director Ken Quinnell entitled The City's Edge, which never had a theatrical release in Australia,[2] although it did in the UK.
[17] The film Short Changed, made in 1985,[18] was based on a script written by him, and the cast included Eora students.
NFSA curators described it as a depiction of "the daily struggle for dignity of a contemporary black man caught between two worlds", and called it "a successful collaboration between an Indigenous writer and a non-Indigenous director".
[2] He moved away from Redfern, but remained a grassroots activist, using his writing to promote his ideas of how dispossession has affected Aboriginal people, especially city-dwellers.