The

Last
Lighthouse
Ke e p e r
a memoi r

J O H N C O O K w i t h J O N B AU E R

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 First published in 2020

Copyright © John Cook with Jon Bauer 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
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(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever
is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has
given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Certain names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals
mentioned.

Allen & Unwin

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Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com

A catalogue record for this

book is available from the
National Library of Australia

ISBN 978 1 76087 538 1

Internal photos courtesy of author’s collection

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 A N O T E F RO M T H E AU T H O R

B ooks, like lighthouses, illuminate the dark seas of life.

The searching beam at a light station won’t identify
every object in the ocean, nor can a memoir capture a life in
its true entirety. This story is mostly true, from where I am
now, though some events, dates and individuals have been
fictionalised.
John Cook
Hobart, May 2020

vii

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 F OR EWOR D

M y family and I first met Head Keeper John Cook

en route to Maatsuyker Island light station, aboard the
Kathleen Del Mar, an old Scottish fishing boat which was
the fortnightly mail and stores boat.
I was the ‘new’ lightkeeper, both excited and apprehensive
to be embarking on this new adventure.
John was well respected in the light service and proved to
be a great teacher and mentor. He has remained a very close
family friend ever since.
On arrival at our new home, I found John to be very
friendly, compassionate and hard-working, as he helped us
to settle into our new environment quickly.
This is a book about John’s epic time as a lightkeeper and
his involvement in many notable events including the Blythe
Star disaster. It is also of historical significance both now and
in the future, as he was one of the last traditional kerosene
lightkeepers in Australia.
This book will take the reader to another time
experiencing the life, romance and hardships in beautiful

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 JOHN COOK with JON BAUER

but rugged environments, as well as being technically

informative.
I absolutely recommend this book. It provides a unique
insight into the lifestyle that has now sadly been overtaken
by technology.
Anthony (Tony) Parsey, former Lightkeeper,
Maatsuyker Island, Eddystone Point,
Cape Bruny and Head Keeper, Cape Bruny

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 PROLOGU E

S ome nights I’d lie out on that flimsy balcony, almost a

hundred feet above the ground, and roar for you. The
sky would be doing its slow roll, the stars strewn, nothing
between me and Antarctica but the raging of the ocean. I’d
feel like I was in thin air. Suspended from the tall, hollow
tower by just a few strips of steel. The wind would be howling,
and that great beam of light would whoom past my face.
I swear it was bright enough that you could hear it going
over. Whoom—one million candles worth of energy, punching
out into the black.
I was alone in all that nothing and noise—the last
man before the ice, the most southerly man on the whole
continent—calling out to my kids.
I knew you couldn’t hear me calling. Nobody could.
I was too far away from the world, which I suppose was
how I liked it. I’d marooned myself in a life I loved, even
if it kept me away from all of you. I used to blame my
absence on my job, but it takes a certain type of man to
choose the life I chose.

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 JOHN COOK with JON BAUER

Lighthouses are just romantic museums now, but back

then they could devour a man if he let them. I did. I let
them. And I’d do it again. If technology hadn’t taken the
lights from me, I’d be there still, lying out on that balcony,
pining for you.
This is the story of why. This is an attempt to bring you
with me this time. This is my way of showing you why I chose
that life. I want to show you what wonderful and addictive
beasts lighthouses were. I want to show you that my being
away mattered.
I want to show you what a man does when he can’t be
in the world.

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 CHAPTER ONE

I ’ve always had visions of escape. I spent most of my school

days staring out the window, dreaming of living out in
the bush.
I lost my father when I was four—my mother told me he
died in the war—and, not long after that, I practically lost
my mother too. For a while, we were inseparable. I was her
only child and she had lost her husband. When she met
my stepfather, I was quickly banished from my place beside
her, and each child they had—three—pushed me further
into the cold. I felt I was living in someone else’s family.
I ran away several times as a boy, trying to turn my dream
of escape into reality. I’d team up with friends who were
also invested in getting away. But we always came up short
because we couldn’t get past the tollbooth on the Hobart
bridge without getting caught.
I left school at fourteen and worked in fishing for a while
before joining the navy at seventeen, the youngest age I could
join. I was hoping to live out the daydreams of my child­
hood, joining the navy as my father had done, but I didn’t

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 JOHN COOK with JON BAUER

get to go off sailing the seven seas; I was fixing planes up in

New South Wales instead. I was basically just a mechanic with
a fancy uniform.
One Christmas when I was home on leave, I wandered
into a big retail shop to buy some film. I loved photography,
even as a young man. In those days, photography was all film
and if you wanted to see your pictures you had to get them
developed. People don’t print photos anymore but back then
they were set in albums like jewels.
I was taken aback by the young woman at the counter.
She looked stunning.
I recognised her as soon as I saw her. I think attraction is
like that. It’s not simply wanting something. When it’s deep,
it’s like recognising someone you already know.
I walked out of the shop without signalling my attraction
to her. I didn’t believe such a bonnie woman would want
anything from me. She must have recognised me too, though,
because Sarah chased me down the street and invited me
for coffee.
Coffee, in a few short steps, led to an invitation to spend
Christmas with her family. This beautiful woman was
interested in me. It was as exciting as it was intimidating.
I was twenty-one and she was twenty. We were ripe with
the energy for life and love.
On that Christmas Day, I had lunch with my mum and
stepdad, then headed over for a second lunch at the fancy
cottages Sarah’s father owned at Coles Bay.
He also owned a big retail business in Australia. He was
a driven and terse man, efficient in social as well as business

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 THE LAST LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

matters. He worked himself near to the bone every day and

expected the same from his staff. He was perfectly pleasant,
but he wasted nothing, and probably expected the same from
someone courting his daughter.
I spent three days at Coles Bay, then went back up to New
South Wales to my navy work, thinking I’d never hear from
Sarah again.
I did hear from her though, and we were engaged by
Easter and married in June. I arranged marriage quarters
for us at the navy base in Gerringong, and then found us an
even better little hideaway cottage down by the beach. We
had to walk across fields and dirt lanes to get to the road but
we were together, living by the waterfront.
I enjoyed having a bit of distance from other people
but Sarah, who was alone up there during the day, was
understandably unhappy at times. The life of a navy wife
is no life really. We had an outdoor dunny and not much
room.
When we found out Sarah was pregnant it was a source of
great celebration, but I was also terrified by the responsibility
of being a father.
Sarah’s father came to visit us around this time. We had a
car that was so tiny I had to take the front seat out so Sarah
could fit in with her belly. She’d sit in the back seat while
I’d be at the wheel like her chauffeur. When I picked her
father up, I’d forgotten to reinstall the front seat, and had
to drive him to our shack in the back seat. I could see the
disapproval on his face, and one evening at dinner I made
the terrible mistake of becoming determined to wipe it away.

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 JOHN COOK with JON BAUER

I decided to leave the navy and try and earn more money
for my family.
Our first daughter, Francesca, was born early in the
morning in the local hospital. I remember how weightless
she felt in my arms. And also how heavy. It fell on me now
to make sure she had what she needed. I felt the burden of
being a real adult at last!
I left the service three months later and we returned
to Tasmania. I thrashed around at home for a while and
eventually got a job running a service station. Service stations
were a new thing then, slowly springing up.
Sarah and I had two more kids and I worked hard, trying
to provide for my growing family and partly trying to earn
her father’s respect.
I was working too hard though and it was starting to
show. Opening the servo first thing in the morning, dealing
with customers and staff all day, then shutting the servo and
driving a taxi until the wee hours.
I was losing my composure and everyone thought I was
going mad. I wasn’t mad; I was exhausted. I was squeezing
every hour out of the day to earn more money. I wasn’t
sleeping in the few hours I gave myself for sleep.
Eventually I felt like I was losing control and a friend
recommended a mental hospital would be a good place to
go and rest. I spent six weeks there, but decided to leave
because they were giving the guy in the opposite bed ECT
(electroconvulsive therapy) and it didn’t look like a rest to me.
I got back on my feet through sheer determination. But
I’d blown a fuse and felt like people probably thought it

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 THE LAST LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

was more than likely I’d blow another fuse. In many ways,
they were right.
Deb was the wife of one of my customers. She was feisty
and outspoken and temperamental. She was also sexy, and
relaxed about her sexuality.
Initially I simply offered Deb a job, thinking someone that
attractive would drag customers in. I was right about that.
Everything was above board for a long time, but Deb and
I began working late together, and I’d drop her home. Her
husband was away with his job a lot. She’d look after my
kids too sometimes. She and Sarah were friendly.
Deb told me her husband had had affairs. They had a
son but she was struggling with motherhood. She wasn’t
a woman who held back from what she wanted.
My infidelity started in my mind. Then in how much
time we spent with one another. And then in the atmosphere
between us when we did spend time together.
Then the line came up near, and eventually, we crossed over.
I had no plans to leave Sarah and my kids. I didn’t want
to bust up my family. But things quickly unravelled and
one messy, ugly day Deb decided to tell Sarah about the
affair. Sarah was obviously deeply angry. And, just like that,
everything was in bits.
I tried to patch things up. I stood out on our front lawn and
shouted to my kids, and to Sarah. I tried to explain it was a
mistake, that I loved her and my kids, not Deb. She ignored
me the first time and then the next time I went round they
were all gone. I checked Coles Bay but they weren’t there
and her father said not a word to me.

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 JOHN COOK with JON BAUER

And that was that, Sarah’s heart closed on me and I was

on the outside. I hated myself. I despised myself for what
I had done to my family. My kids. I rolled over and, for a
while, died. I’d never wanted to be responsible for a broken
marriage. Especially seeing what it did to children.
But that was it. One pull on the rope, and the whole
enormous ship could float away from harbour. One mistake
and everything had come undone. No more bath times and
messy breakfasts. No more school art on the fridge. No more
little hands in mine.
Now there was one toothbrush in the cup at night. One
pair of shoes in the front hall. It was a long time before
I stopped hating myself.
I lived with my mum for a while. Deb rented a place. She
and her husband had broken up and I was looking over my
shoulder for him all the time. He’d follow me home from
work sometimes. Or park out the front of the servo as I was
closing up. I kept my gun on me. Sometimes I thought about
using it on myself.
On my darkest days I’d sit in the car near my kids’ school
and watch them play. It was heartbreaking but I didn’t know
how to patch things up.
It felt like the best option was for them to have the wealth
of Sarah’s family behind them, the devoted good sense of
their mum, and a chance of a better life, without me.
Predictably, I spent some time with Deb. She and I were
a language I understood. There was a chemistry between
us that just made sense to me, even if that made me feel
guilty too.

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 THE LAST LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

Her husband had taken custody of her son and she was
devastated too. We could keep one another company in the
wreckage, even if I was still angry with her for her part in
it all. Not as angry as I was at myself though. And, despite
everything that had happened, there were a lot of things
I still loved about her.
It was into this mess that the advert for a married lighthouse
keeper dropped.

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 CH A P T E R T WO

B ack then I thought about lighthouses in much the

same way most people probably do. I thought of them
as honourable and romantic buildings. Places of woollen
jumpers and maps and freshly brewed coffee. I imagined
there would be peace and security—the kind of snuggled
feeling you might get if you were a wombat or a rabbit in
your burrow.
I was familiar with lighthouses from my navy and fishing
days too. Both fishing and navy vessels relied on lighthouses,
not simply to warn them away from land and rocks, but to
help establish their location at sea. In my time in the navy, I’d
spent many a night sitting 10 miles out on the water, holding
our position based on a bearing to Peter Peter—the codename
for the lighthouse on Perpendicular Point, Jervis Bay.
Most appealing of all, a lighthouse seemed to offer a
lifestyle that was the opposite of the life I was currently living.
I didn’t feel as if I could stick around Hobart, orbiting my
kids’ lives like a cold moon. Of course I was wrong, I see
that now, but at the time it was all forest.

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 THE LAST LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

By this time, Deb and I were living together in a simple

shearer’s shack, rent-free on the proviso that we painted
it. There was a small garden leading out across wide land
that had once farmed sheep and fodder. There were sheep
out there now, including our pet lamb Blackie (a lamb that
thought it was a dog; it would even chase sticks we threw
into the water for our dogs).
I sat down to fill out the application form after Sunday
dinner. Our dogs, Lucy and Stinky, were curled up in front
of the fire, and Deb was in the kitchen with the radio on. She
always liked to have something chiming in the background.
The application asked all the usual questions, but my pen
stopped when I reached the query: Are you married?
I turned from the form and looked out of the window.
Deb and I weren’t married and, having just divorced Sarah,
I wasn’t keen to marry again.
Of course, in Hobart in 1968 an unmarried couple living
together was unusual, and sometimes looked down upon.
Deb and I had changed her surname by deed poll so that it
matched mine. I thought that if she was Deb Cook that might
be enough for the world. We wouldn’t need to necessarily
lie, other people would just assume that we were married.
That was fine with the general hoi polloi, but these were
the powers that be. Nonetheless, I was desperate to escape the
reminders of my three kids, and my mistakes. Desperate to
get away to a life that made sense to me. One that insisted
we were married.
A few days later a letter came from the Ministry of Transport
inviting me to an interview and asking me to bring my wife.

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 JOHN COOK with JON BAUER

On the morning of the interview, I realised what had felt

easy to say on a form was going to be harder to say in person.
Deb called out and asked me to get a move on. She seemed
happy to proceed.
I might not get the job, I thought to myself, as I shaved.
There were eighty other applicants, all of whom I imagined
were married.
Outside, Deb had her hands in the trough trying to get a
huge blood stain out of my work clothes.

***
The night before the interview I was working at the servo.
A customer had come in with a steaming engine and a dent
in his bloodied bumper. He’d hit something down the road
a way and was full of anger for what had become of his
car. I asked him what he’d hit but he said he didn’t know.
I could smell the pub on him. Those were different times
and I sometimes had drivers through who could barely count
their change, let alone steer a vehicle.
I trundled his car into the repair garage and let him use
the phone to call for a lift. Once he’d finished, I grabbed
my automatic pistol, snicked the lock on the servo door,
and wandered down the road in the direction from which
he’d come.
It was a warm night, the stars out in force, cicadas sounding
their glee. I didn’t share their happiness, I was simply putting
one foot in front of the other.
I came across a skid mark on the bitumen. The air
was tainted with the smell of blood. The side of the road

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 THE LAST LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

sloped down a few feet below and was heavy with bush and
scrub.
I scanned it with my torch, wandering away from the tyre
marks. Whatever he’d hit would have been propelled forwards.
I crept forward with my pistol in my hand. It might seem
strange that many of us carried automatic pistols back then,
but Tasmania was particularly rugged.
A car came by and I crouched down until it passed. An
injured roo squinted in the headlights. The smell of blood
was stronger now, the warm night embellishing it. The
roo was lying in the bushes with its paw on its chest. It was
large and elegant, and badly hurt.
It had clearly been struck in the chest and was holding the
pain. Its breathing was laboured and there was a lot of blood.
I moved nearer to check it over but my proximity stressed
it. By and by it let me get closer, as an animal usually does
when it’s too weak to escape. Its chest was a mess, and there
was blood at its nostrils, which sometimes made it sneeze.
I slowly moved my torch beam over its body to see if it
could perhaps be saved. A pair of eyes peered at me from
the pouch on its belly.
I checked the roo over one more time, having a really
good look at her chest. I spoke to her a little, and the tears
I shed were full of despair. I often saw the damage wildlife
did to cars. A good portion of my income came from it. The
roads were always dotted with the swollen bodies of wildlife.
I pulled the trigger and the roo seemed to jump at the
sound rather than the bullet. I had aimed well, but I pulled
the trigger again just in case. I jumped this time too, and

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 JOHN COOK with JON BAUER

the sound raced out into the night, coming back at me over
and over again.
The mother’s troubles left her body by way of a long sigh,
but the joey became noisy now that she was on her own. She
seemed to be struggling to leave the pouch. I levelled my gun
at her.
It reminded me of my kids’ faces, the way they’d stared
out the window at me when everything in my life had
imploded.
The joey was quite still now, its eyes blinking at me.
I took off my shirt and stepped forward. The pouch was so
warm and the joey exuded quite some heat as I wandered
topless up the road, the animal twitching and fussing under
the shirt. It gave off the musky smell of nature—something
akin to the aroma of goat, and the warm sweet-sourness of
milk. Some of its mother’s blood was soaking through my
shirt, but I carried that little soul up the road like it was a
newborn child.
I turned off all the servo lights, except the Marlboro sign
over the ciggies behind the counter, so the space was dim
and non-threatening for the joey.
I set it on the counter in my shirt. It was panting with
the stress, but stayed still if I kept its eyes covered.
I found a box for it, using my shirt as a bed, and put the
box’s flaps down to keep it dark. All I could offer it was
milk. I took a bottle from the fridge and set a pot on the
little electric stove. I called Deb and asked her to bring a
bottle and teat I sometimes used for the lambs.
I stood there in the near dark, listening to the joey’s

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 THE LAST LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

breathing, the way I’d stood in the dark with my three kids—
coming home late from work, Sarah asleep, and their sweet
bodies sprawled out on the bed, breathing those smooth,
carefree breaths.
I took a decent knife from the back office and went off
down the road with it. That roo would have died for nothing
if I left it to rot. I took to its hind legs with the knife. It was
grim work in the black, and I stopped once when I heard
Deb’s voice calling out to me in the dark. But I took the legs
from the roo to honour it somehow, wandering up the road
with my hands and forearms bloody. I’m not sure how eating
the meat would help, but it made sense to me.
The next day I was readying myself for the interview
and starting out on another lie. Deb and I both hoped we
would be running away to something better, but both of
us would be leaving behind the sort of mess that will only
follow you.

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