dockside workers by the "Citizen's Defence Brigade" in 1928, the South Australian convention of the ALP expressed "grave alarm" at his appointment. He was also chairman of trustees for the Services Canteen Trust Fund from 1947 until his death. Blackburn was re-elected as president of RSSAILA in 1948. On 8 June 1949, Blackburn was appointed as the honorary colonel of the Adelaide University Regiment (AUR), and he was transferred to the Retired List in January 1950 with the honorary rank of brigadier. In September of the same year he relinquished his role as state president of RSSAILA. In 1953, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal. He relinquished his honorary colonel role with AUR in January 1955. In 1955, he was appointed as a member of the Australian National Airlines Commission and a director of Trans Australia Airlines. He also served on the Television Broadcaster's Board, overseeing the introduction of that medium into South Australia, and was a trustee of the Civilian Internees Trust Fund and Prisoners of War Trust Fund. For his "exceptionally fine honorary service as chairman of several trusts, especially for the benefit of ex-servicemen and their dependants", he was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1955 New Year Honours. The following year, Blackburn and his wife attended the VC centenary gathering in London, and visited the Pozières battlefield in France. Blackburn died on 24 November 1960 at Crafers, South Australia, aged 67, from a ruptured aneurism of the common iliac artery, and was buried with full military honours in the AIF section of Adelaide's West Terrace Cemetery. Many members of the public and hundreds of former members of the 10th Battalion and 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion lined the route between St Peter's Cathedral and the cemetery, and eight brigadiers were pallbearers. His medal set, including his VC, was passed to his son Richard then his grandson Tom, before being donated to the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, where it is displayed in the Hall of Valour. The Department of Veterans' Affairs office in Adelaide was named "Blackburn House" in 1991. there were eleven streets in Adelaide named for Blackburn, and one in Brisbane. In 2008, it was debated whether to call the new tunnel under Anzac Highway either the "Blackburn Underpass" or "Inwood Underpass", after another South Australian who won a VC in 1917, Roy Inwood. The