Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper - Hardcover

When Peter Hill, a lackadaisical student at Dundee College of Art, answered an advert in "The Scotsman" seeking full-time lighthouse keepers, little did he imagine that within a month he would be living with three men he didn't know in a lighthouse on Pladda, a small remote island off the west coast of Scotland. He was 19, it was 1973 and, with his head fed by Vietnam, Zappa, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Watergate and Coronation Street, Hill was to spend the next six months working on various Scottish lighthouses, "keeping" with all manner of unusual and fascinating people. Within thirty years this way of life was to have disappeared entirely.

PETER HILL was born to an Australian mother and Scottish father but grew up in Glasgow. Following his brief stint as a lighthouse keeper he did a number of jobs but for the past twenty years he has focussed most of his energy into his art and working as an art critic. He has written for many publications including the Sydney Morning Herald, London Review of Books, Artpresse and Interview and in 1986 founded the arts magazine Alba. For the past ten years he has lived in Sydney.