He was born in Strathbogie to farmer George Mackrell and Mary Ann Perkins.
He attended state school until the age of fourteen, when he began work in a butter factory at Mansfield.
He went to the goldfields in Western Australia in 1901, returning to Victoria in 1905 but travelling to South Africa in 1908.
In 1920 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly for Upper Goulburn, representing the Country Party.
In supporting Macfarlan against Albert Dunstan he had been expelled from the Country Party, and he was defeated contesting Goulburn in 1945.