This article first appeared in the Chinchilla News and is about Stuart Dinnis ' father, Max Dinnis. Published 3 years after his death.
Was Chinchilla larrikin Max Dinnis the real Mad Max?
by alana.calvert
18th Jun 2015 9:32 AM
MENTION the famous "Mad Max" films near any lifelong Chinchilla resident and you'll be sure to hear about the infamous "Mad" Max Dinnis.
Or, as he's since come to be known - the "Real Mad Max".
Max Dinnis was a childhood friend of George Miller's in Chinchilla, and was dubbed "Mad Max" at school.
But while the Mad Max of the cinematic world was mad through a desire for revenge after having his family slaughtered by a road gang, Chinchilla's Max's madness seemed to be more of a natural disposition.
"Dad always said he was the original Mad Max and teased Mum that he was better looking than Mel Gibson too!" Max Dinnis's son, Stuart, recalled.
According to local legend, Mad Max Dinnis was affectionately remembered as a wild and rough man with a lifelong passion for anything with wheels.
"He was really into motorbikes and used to go trail bike riding including the Bunya Mountains rides," Stuart said.
"He could jump a bike up onto a fence and ride along the top of it.
"He loved guns, owned many rifles and used to reload his own bullets."
Max Dinnis was born at the Chinchilla RSL hall during the Second World War when it was turned into an emergency hospital ward, which, according to Stuart, was something he took advantage of later in life.
"He always used this as an excuse to visit everyday after work for a beer with his friends," Stuart said.
Mad Max Dinnis' fascination with machines with wheels or triggers extended beyond earth-bound contraptions too, with Mad Max also owning toy planes as a boy.
"When he was about 14 he had an accident where a toy plane with a metal propeller flew into his left eye, which permanently blinded him in it and it turned outwards," Stuart said.
"His cousin Spike Scouller said that only made him a better shot for roo shooting and pig hunting."
When Viv Brown and Charlie Summers, childhood friends of both George Miller and the "real" Mad Max, caught up at the premiere screening of Mad Max: Fury Road in Chinchilla last month, they reflected on the time when they were all still just boys and without any TV, internet or Playstation, but never without inventing new ways to entertain themselves.
On one such occasion, after the boys saw or heard about the hammer throw event in the 1956 Olympics, they decided to have a go themselves.
Except it was with an axe.
During Mad Max Dinnis's turn, he threw the axe down Barber St and unintentionally into the front window of the Brown family's lounge room.
But according to Viv Brown, it was him that got the blame.
"I've heard the story about the axe hammer throw a thousand times," Stuart said.
"He also put an axe into his calf muscle cutting wood when he was about 12 and simply wrapped it up with a handkerchief and wore long pants until it healed so his parents didn't find out."
While most of the legend connected to Mad Max Dinnis includes stories involving the kind of death-defying stunts to make Hollywood stuntmen nervous, there are also a number of stories which are comic in their absurdity.
On one occasion Mad Max somehow procured some goats out near the Baking Board before he went about painting them.
It's unclear how tame the goats were, how long it took Max to finish this ambitious but highly creative task, or even how sober he may have been at the time, but once he'd finished, the goats were clearly painted like racehorses, complete with their own saddles.
After Max Dinnis left school he moved away to work on properties around Wandoan and Taroom, before working at the local Repco dealership during the 1970s and early 80s.
"He had a natural understanding of cars and spare parts," Stuart said.
"In later years he ran the spare parts at Moorlands (John Deere) and always made himself available 24/7 for farmers needing parts outside normal hours during harvest."
Max Dinnis lived out the rest of his life in Chinchilla with his wife Jennifer, before he died on June 1, 2013, at the age of 72.
The legend surrounding Chinchilla's "real" Mad Max, however, seems to be a long way off dying.
Re-posted by Stuart Dinnis.
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