Few people are fortunate enough to combine their lifetime's work with their lifetime passion.

David Cooke is one who has.

In his eighty-one years, he has operated by torchlight in the outback to flying a single-engine aircraft across the Pacific.

From his youth in genteel Mosman in Sydney, he escaped to the rough and tumble of life in the Northern Territory and North Queensland. The blend of medicine and flying has allowed him a rich and varied career of exciting and life-enhancing experiences. Throughout all this, he has ceaselessly explored the tangible loss of his father who was killed one month before his birth. Over the years he has gradually fleshed out the background of the man he never knew and has mourned all his life.

Still working as a general practitioner and still flying his two aircraft, Temps and Pressures tells the story of a remarkable man who has achieved much in his life and still looks to the future and further challenges ahead.