![]() Yet Caroline is exhilarated by the scenic coastline with its drizzle and fog, seabirds and whales, and finds time to grow a garden and, as anticipated, write. “So far the only life I know I’ve saved is my own,” she says, with her trademark dry wit. As for dangerous rescue missions or dramatic shipwrecks-that kind of excitement is rare. ![]() weather report, the days are filled with maintaining the light station buildings, sea sampling, radio communication, beach cleanup, wildlife encounters and everything in between. The reality is hard physical labour, long stretches of isolation and the constant threat of de-staffing. Caroline soon learned that the lighthouse-keeping life does not consist of long, empty hours in which to write. When a permanent position for a lighthouse keeper became available, Caroline quit her job and joined Jeff on the lights. They endured lonely months of living apart, but the way of life rejuvenated Jeff and inspired Caroline to contemplate serious shifts in order to accompany him. Jeff was tired of piecing together low-paying part-time jobs and, with Caroline’s encouragement, applied for a position as a relief lightkeeper on a remote North Pacific island. With an established career in book-selling and promotion, four books of her own and having raised a son with her husband, Jeff, she yearned for adventure and to re-ignite her passion for writing. In 2007, Caroline Woodward was itching for a change. 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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