It left me thinking that some people should know themselves a little better and not get married/have kids etc. He spends a LOT of pages talking about how he didn't do right by his kids and his relationship with his partner, Deb, who must have had the patience of a saint (as well as his ex-wife). What this book was mostly about was the author's bad choices in his personal life. As a person who is living in Tasmania myself, I wanted to read all about life as a lighthouse keeper (at one point I was considering doing this myself) and what it was like to live in such isolated places but with plenty of amazing wildlife around you. I am feeling quite conflicted about this book. This text refers to the paperback edition. He has never worked in a lighthouse but he does have a lot of woolly jumpers, experience with extremes of wilderness and solitude, and shaves only sporadically. His novel Rocks in the Belly was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, won Best Debut in the Indies, was shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC, broadcast on ABC National and published in eight countries. He now lives in the UK again where he works as a somatic psychotherapist, as well as continuing to write short and long fiction. Jon Bauer was born and raised in the UK, before moving to Australia in 2001 where he lived for thirteen happy years. John was also an honorary National Park Ranger. He was a lightkeeper and later head keeper at various Tasmanian lights, notably Eddystone Point, Tasman Island, Maatsuyker Island and Bruny Island, until 1993. After serving in the Australian Navy, being a walking-track maintenance worker, operating a mobile x-ray health scanning unit and running service stations, John joined the Australian Lighthouse Service in 1968. John grew up loving the natural environment and being practical. John Cook moved from the UK to Tasmania as a boy with his mother at the outbreak of World War II. Evocatively told, The Last Lighthouse Keeper is a love story between a man and a dying way of life, as well as a celebration of wilderness and solitude. But for John, nothing was more heartbreaking than the introduction of electric lights, and the lighthouses that were left empty forever. From sleepless nights keeping the lights alive, battling the wind and sea as they ripped at gutters and flooded stores, raising a joey, tending sheep and keeping ducks and chickens, the life of a keeper was one of unexpected joy and heartbreak.
As one of Australia's longest-serving lighthouse keepers, John spent 26 years tending Tasmania's well-known kerosene 'lights' at Tasman Island, Maatsuyker Island and Bruny Island.
In Tasmania, John Cook is known as 'The Keeper of the Flame'. People asked how we stood the isolation and boredom, but in some ways, it was more stimulating to have your senses turned up. Or break them.' MATTHEW EVANS I loved the life of the island, because I knew my body was more alive than it was on the mainland. Noble work that can ultimately redeem a lost soul. John Cook's ripping life story exposes Tasmania's old kero-fuelled lighthouses: relentless physically and emotionally demanding labour, done under the often cruel vagaries of nature.
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