Wayne McLennan grew up in Cessnock, New South Wales, and was a professional boxer and a bank teller, amongst other things. He left Australia in 1978 and travelled extensively throughout the world, becoming a gold miner in Costa Rica and the skipper of a fishing boat in Nicaragua. In one of his many adventures (retold in Rowing to Alaska) he rowed from Seattle to Alaska, a distance of 1,600 kilometres. In 2004 McLennan returned briefly to Australia to referee a travelling series of boxing matches featuring young Aboriginal mission boys. By 2005 he was living in Amsterdam with his wife Caroline Visser, also a writer.
