Max was born in the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield in 1935, with his family moving to Sydney in the early days of WW2 due to anti-German sentiment towards the family name. There he would grow up with his father helping him along in both after-school enterprise and his school studies.
As a student he worked hard and went first to Opportunity Classes at the end of Primary School and then to the prestigious Fort Street High School. But by the time he was
