Julie Mac is a semi-retired, neurodiverse Social Worker that lives on the Victorian central goldfields with two insane toy poodles and her long suffering husband. Mac graduated in 2018 with a degree in criminal justice and now spends her time obsessively writing, researching and hoarding craft supplies.
Mac has authored a diverse range of books on Australian social history:
A Woman on the Victorian Goldfields
Mac’s Gr-Gr-Gr-Grandmother Sarah Davenport (1809-1896)
Using sketches by transient artist S.T. Gill and a transcript of Sarah’s diary from the State Library of Victoria, Mac has created a scrapbook of Sarah’s ‘tryals’ and survival in the new colony. Although Sarah’s memoir has missing pages and a cliff-hanger ending when Sarah’s malingering husband is swindled on the goldfields, Mac fills in the missing details using family knowledge and historical archives to find a story of adversity, crime, survival and ‘the bush telegraph’. A true story of a “Sceth of an emegrants Life in austrailia from Leiving England in the year of our Lord 1841”
Victoria’s First Serial Killer
Mac’s Gr-Gr-Grandfather, Robert Francis Burns (1840-1883)
After a series of brutal murders and sensational court trials, railway labourer/navvy Burns was hanged at Ararat Gaol on September 25 1883 for the murder of his ‘mate’.
A true story about a hangman, a monster and a colony.
Sharpies, Australia’s Unique working-class youth movement (1952-1987s)
Former teenage Sharpie gang member Julie Mac explores this forgotten mid-century working-class subculture. Sharpies were children that weaponized their attitude, custom made knitwear, distinctive hairstyle, fashion, tattoos, anti-social behaviour (and at times, violence) in their battle against the ‘isms’ of class, race and gender. Sharpies were despised by conservative society. Overlooked, hated and ignored for 50+ years, Sharpies now claim their rightful place in Australian social history for their contribution towards social change.
