Autobiography of Islander Thomas Lowah (1914-1989) He tells of his life as a diver on pearling luggers, sailing the waters of the Torres Strait and working down the Great Barrier Reef. Conditions were so hard that the skipper would not let the divers out of the water to eat their lunch of damper and syrup, but would hand it down to them to eat while they trod water.??One of the first autobiographies of a Torres Strait Islander and a unique document of a way of life that is parallel to, but quite different from, life in the white community. Illustrated by Ray Crooke.