I bought this book after the author, John Gillett, gave a talk to a local writers group at Eastwood Library in June 2026.
Voyages of a Lifetime is John’s first book, a reflection on his life adventures focussed mainly on ships as he worked for a long time as a marine engineer. He also sailed his own ships later in life.
What first interested me was John’s description of his formative years in the western Sydney suburb of Greenacre, a working class suburb of Sydney. Those were in the years following the Great Depression. I immediately thought this is a great story in itself, a person from humble beginnings, with a limited horizon, often a hazard of life in the suburbs, who later gets out to see the world, Here was another example of how growing up in the Western suburbs of Sydney doesn’t stop anyone from dreaming or sowing the seeds of future success in the wider world.
The book came about through the encouragement of John’s partner, Dr Yenna Wang who is herself a writer. While John tapped out the manuscript, Yenna helped him get it to self-publication stage. While the book draws an arc from John’s earliest memories to his present retirement, the book is a tidy compilation of impressions, anecdotes and short stories about his life. And there is something quintessentially Australian about this story. He shares a wonderful picture of life in Greenacre at that time and the people who lived there.
As it is, John has engaged in all sorts of work apart from his occupation as marine engineer. It is a packed life. We can sometimes forget what those eras of full employment were like. I recall my own uncle who worked as a labourer around the city, including being a rigger on the building of the Opera House. He once joked that work was so easy to find, you could stand out the front of a building site and the site manager would come out to talk to you and you could say:’ Wait there, mate, I’m just deciding whether or not I would like to work here.’
John was more of an entrepreneur. He started and ran many different businesses between and after his spells at sea. This included his farming years where at different times he grew crops like blueberries and olives. He also worked as a manager at various motels.
Spoiler alert, I don’t want to retell John’s stories here, but to say I enjoyed his manner of story telling and his accounts of local history during those times. I give his book four stars, I take one star off for the need of a final edit, some sentence and word issues are part of the style, which in some ways I like, because it adds to the authenticity of the book, but which some may tut-tut at.
Reading this book reminded me of an observation I made during my creative writing course at Wollongong University (2008-2011). I sometimes read a few books at a time. On this occasion one book I was reading was Taking Retirement, a work of creative nonfiction by Carl H Klaus (1932-2022), a US Professor of Nonfiction Writing who was about to retire. This book was a memoir of his experiences and reflections during this life transition. I like biographies and memoirs. The work was technically sound, very polished and wonderfully worded etc but it didn’t really get the sparks flying for me.
In contrast, I was also reading Baruch My Own Story, the life story of US investor and statesman, Bernard Baruch (1870-1965) , Baruch was no writer. In his preface, he says he wrote the book in his later years at the urging of his children. The work was well edited, maybe he could afford to get the appropriate help. But once I started, I just had to read on. His story is more from the heart than the head and is filled with lots of astute observations about people and life. I marvelled at his innate story telling skills. And I felt the powerful contrast between this book and Klaus’s book. It was one of the many rich revelations I had during my creative writing study years.
And only recently I heard a quote from Kurt Vonnegut who said that the best writers don’t come from the English Department.
John’s book fits in with the Baruch style of autobiography. I also think that books like John’s, though not on the bestseller lists, should be held by the appropriate local libraries because of their value as personal accounts of life in their local areas in those days gone by.