Last Lighthouse Keeper

John Cook moved from the UK to Tasmania as a boy with his mother at the outbreak of World War II. John grew up loving the natural environment and being practical. 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. He was a lightkeeper and later head keeper at various Tasmanian lights, notably Eddystone Point, Tasman Island, Maatsuyker Island and Bruny Island, until 1993. John was also an honorary National Park Ranger.Jon Bauer was born and raised in the UK, before moving to Australia in 2001 where he lived for thirteen happy years. He now lives in the UK again where he works as a somatic psychotherapist, as well as continuing to write short and long fiction. 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 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. He is working on a new novel.

John Cook's (with Jon Bauer) ripping life story strips away the romanticism of Tasmania's old kero-fuelled lighthouses to expose living there for what it was: relentless physically and emotionally demanding labour, done under the often cruel vagaries of nature. Noble work that can ultimately redeem a lost soul. Or break them. - Matt Evans