Lainie Anderson

Lainie Anderson is a columnist with Adelaide’s Sunday Mail and author of Long Flight Home. She is passionate about many things including raising awareness about significant achievements in Australian history, treating others with kindness and dignity, and raising her twin boys Harry and Jack.

Lainie is the volunteer spokesperson for Voluntary Assisted Dying South Australia, co-founder of her small business Mining Family Matters and volunteer Regional Selection Committee member, SA, for the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.

Lainie has a Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) from the University of South Australia and is currently studying a PhD in Communication with the same university. She’s been a columnist with Adelaide’s Sunday Mail since 2007 and previously worked at the Herald Sun in Melbourne as a political reporter and at The Times in London as a sub-editor. She’s also a freelance writer and public speaker.

In early 2010 Lainie teamed up with friend and mining mum Alicia Ranford to launch Mining Family Matters, an online support network for families in mining and resources. Their award-winning website attracts visitors from around the world. They have also sold more than 180,000 copies of their printed Survival Guide for Mining Families, which has been translated into French and Dutch and sells around the world including in Canada and the US.

In 2017 she travelled to nine countries on her Churchill Fellowship to gauge the significance of 1919 Air Race, the winning flight from England to Australia by South Australia's Smith brothers, and their Vickers Vimy aircraft now housed at Adelaide Airport. She’s since written an historic fiction on the air race called Long Flight Home, which was published by Wakefield Press, and co-produced documentary called The Greatest Air Race, presented by astronaut Andy Thomas.