John Stanton
John Stanton is a Filipino-born Australian author and artist, from the stunning Atherton Tablelands in North Queensland, Australia. After migrating to Australia as an infant with his parents in 1967, he was educated in Perth, Western Australia, but did not find school very interesting. He wanted to travel, and as luck would have it, a friend asked him to travel to South Australia with him to work on his uncle’s farm. This was the beginning of John’s life: working and travelling around Australia, and eventually around the world, for more than four decades.
In his teenage years, John travelled and worked for two years around Australia, obtaining work wherever he could find it. In 1984, John’s travels took him to Cairns, in North Queensland, where he met his parents who had travelled from Perth to see him. His father suggested he join him in the oil industry, as his rig was about to enter Australian waters, and his company was looking for new recruits. At first John was sceptical because he loved his travelling and working lifestyle, but after some thought, he joined the oil and gas industry, working offshore from Karratha, Western Australia.
His work has taken him to many parts of the world, with projects that included work in a Singapore shipyard, refurbishing an oil rig and sailing it back to Australia as part of the deck crew. His experiences include swinging on a rope in treacherous seas between a supply vessel and a rig in the South China Sea, saving a gas platform from burning, and conducting countless offshore operations in the Andaman Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf of Guinea off West Africa. These experiences were the inspiration for his novel, The Delta (BookPal, 2008), an action adventure set in the oil industry.
John continues to write and is presently working on his memoirs. He also paints abstract art, drawing on decades of working, travelling and witnessing some of the natural colours of our world.