Maxine's Story

Non-Fiction

Pages: 236 Ratings:

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When Maxine’s Irish ancestors left for Australia, they did so from a land racked by famine, poverty and political turmoil. Australia was a desperate last hope for a better life. These people could not have known what they were coming to, only that they would never see the place of their birth again.

For Maxine’s future husband, the journey was different. Ian left a world of disappearing privilege in Pakistan to make a new start in Australia. The White Australia Policy was still in force and despite a mixed genetic heritage, Ian was formally an ‘Asian’.

Before all of this, white ghost invaders from England had forcibly taken the land from its first peoples. Resistance existed but had been crushed.

Maxine’s Story brings these three narratives, and more, into one story. It takes readers from the fields of Ireland and jungles of India to the birth and growth of the world’s remotest city – Perth.

Maxine’s Story does not shy away from Australia’s more uncomfortable truths. But it also celebrates ordinary people living in an imperfect and changing world. People who want the world to be better for those they love and those who come after them.

People just like us.

Sean Innis is transforming himself into a modestly impoverished, but intellectually fulfilled, writer. He is a (semi) regular columnist for The Mandarin.

Before beginning his transformation, Sean was the principal of Damala St Consulting—which sounds grander than it is. When not writing, he is an associate at Queritas, a firm of consulting philosophers—which is as (ahem) profound as it sounds.

Sean is an Honorary Fellow at the Australian National University, an Adjunct Fellow at the University of New South Wales and a Senior Fellow at ADC Forum.

Most of Sean’s working life has been spent in and around the government. This includes as inaugural director of the ANU Public Policy Hub, and as Special Adviser to Australia’s Productivity Commission. Before that Sean had a 15-year senior executive career in the Australian Public Service.

In his early working life, Sean was an average university tutor and very, very average bank teller. Both experiences taught him a lot. He plays the guitar to the regular annoyance, and occasional delight, of his family.