Tom Lewis trained as a teacher in Tasmania, and contributed various articles to newspapers and magazines, as well as working as a part-time researcher for the ABC. He worked as a freelance journalist whilst a high school teacher of English, History and Computing, in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Researching the shipwrecks of the NT, he published a newspaper series of articles on the subject which led to the release of the book Wrecks in Darwin Waters (1992). The same interest in history saw a young adult novel, Darwin Sayonara, released in 1991, chronicling the attacks on Darwin by Japanese forces in 1942.
Tom joined the Royal Australian Navy as a reservist in 1993, and researched further aspects of the NTs military history in that role. In 1999 he took up a position as an instructor at the Naval College in Jervis Bay, teaching officer trainees. By this time he had also released
Sensuikan I-124 (1997), which told of the controversial history of the Japanese submarine I-124, sunk outside Darwin in 1942 with the loss of 80 lives. He has published extensively further on historical and naval subjects, with his articles and essays receiving eight varied awards. Other books include
A War at Home (1999) and
By Derwent Divided (2000).
