A graduate of Melbourne University, Sue MacKinnon has worked as a librarian and freelance journalist, and was editor of the quarterly magazine This Australia (c. 1984-1989). She was Managing Director of Greenhouse Publications in the 1980s and published two children's information books, Beef Cattle and Oil and Natural Gas. She was co-author of Life on the Australian Goldfields (with Derek I. Stone, 1976) and Grass Roots Vegie Gardener's Companion (with Graeme Leith, 1980) and author of Bendigo and Its Vintage Talking Trams (1981). From 1974 until her death MacKinnon was co-owner and co-manager of Passing Clouds winery at Kingower in central Victoria. In the last years of her life she was stricken with muscular dystrophy.
