Tom Cole (2) (1906–1995)

If you imagined sitting around a fire at night and listening to Buffalo Bill Cody tell the story of his life you might get a sense of the sort of life - and story - Tom Cole has to tell. It's of a life lived 'all up' in the remote Australian and New Guinea back country, raising cattle, shooting buffalo, wrangling horses and hunting crocodiles. The Last Paradise is New Guinea in the 1950's and 1960's, just before independence. Cole tells the story of crocodile hunting across the length and breadth of New Guinea, before settling in the highlands to grow coffee in country recently brought into contact with civilization.

It's a story of world lost to us, of men who believed every day was a gift from providence and lived accordingly. For all of that, Cole tells his story with a few wry asides about his own fallibility, and reserves his greatest scorn for the boasters and self promoters. This is an essential read for anyone who has already read Cole's 'Hell West and Crooked', and of interest to those who'd try to build a picture of Australian rule in New Guinea. But mostly its for the armchair traveller, who can at least claim to share the spirit of adventure of those larger than life characters, even if we ourselves don't get out so much any more.… (meer)

For readers of Cole's 'Hell West and Crooked' this collection of short stories is a bit like the cuttings that were left on the floor of the editor's studio. That's not to say they are disappointing, but only that they lack the framework of time and space that gave readers of Cole's biography an appreciation of how extraordinary his life and talent for re-telling it has been. If you have the chance, make your acquaintance with Cole through his other books and save this collection of out-takes for a rainy day. The short stories in this collection give voice to some of Cole's thinking on the punitive treatment of aborigines in a country that saw both murder and massacre even up until recent times. And of course the collection end with perhaps Cole's most improbable story of all, an affair of the heart… (meer)

Tom Cole hunted crocodiles and buffalo, was a horse-breaker, brumby runner and drover, owned and managed cattle stations and a coffee plantation.
The Last Paradise is the sequel to Tom Cole's bestselling autobiography Hell West and Crooked and recounts his story of thirty years in New Guinea amongst 'crocodiles, cannibals and coffee'.
Operating as the first professional crocodile shooter in New Guinea, Tom Cole risked life and limb hunting from frail canoes in wild and sometimes unexplored country, working with everyone from cannibals to missionaries to government officials, and the larger-than-life characters still drifting around the Pacific after the war.
Tom Cole, Australian legend, led a life like no other.
'Crocodile Dundee has nothing on Tom Cole.' Sunday Sun.… (meer)