Maxi, who juggles his time between being a lifeguard, working as a firefighter and writing children’s books on water safety, fit in a wedding to his jam-packed schedule in February as he tied the knot with his longtime love Tahlia.
Speaking about the nuptials, Maxi admits the COVID-19 restrictions which later wreaked havoc on many couples’ wedding plans, was not yet on his radar at the time.
“I was spending the summers fighting the bushfires, we thought the biggest fear for our wedding was going to be bushfires and smoke haze but we were lucky, we had a really beautiful day on the first of Feb,” he says.
The couple, who met at Double Bay’s Sheaf Hotel, had been dating for more than five years before Maxi popped the question in 2018.
“We managed to get married up at Whale Beach [in Sydney’s northern beaches] and went on our honeymoon over to Singapore and the Maldives and everything was fine,” Maxi says.
“We literally just got back and three weeks later the first lockdown happened so we managed to get a wedding and our honeymoon done unscathed and we were very lucky!”
Now that children are their sights, Maxi is looking to his own father for wisdom and says the most important lesson instilled into him by his dad Robert is a strong work ethic.
“He always told me, ‘Be a hard worker, put your head down and don’t complain, just dip in and get the job done.’” Maxi says, adding that he's recently teamed up with his dad for a partnership with Glen Grant Arboralis Whisky.
“My dad’s a very hard worker and I’m very lucky that I follow his traits as a workaholic – good and bad, we’re always working but I don’t give in too easy and if I put my head down and my mind on something, I’ll achieve it.”