From soldier to peacemaker: Aaron Tait’s search for redemption

WHEN Aaron Tait was deployed to Iraq as a young Navy diver in the hours after 9/11, he couldn’t wait to get out there.

“There was this spirit amongst many of us, that we were going to see action, fight the terrorists and have this big adventure,” he said.

But over the course of the war, that spirit changed — and Tait chose a completely different path as a humanitarian.

New Zealand-born Tait’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all Navy men, and he followed in their footsteps at 17, heading off for officer training in early 2001.

“I wanted to leave the suburbs of Perth, where I’d done high school, and go and see the world,” he said.

 

He was on the last night of his Navy diver course when word came through that planes had struck the World Trade Center in New York. Soon after, he was sent to the front lines in the maritime campaign of the War on Terror.

“Our mission was to aggressively enforce the sanctions on Iraq through non-compliant boardings — high-risk, nighttime missions to apprehend oil smugglers,” he said. “Over the course of the campaign I began to doubt the war, and when I realised the bad it had done — 250,000 women and children died because of these sanctions — I felt I had to do a lot of good to right my wrongs.”

That journey of transformation is at the heart of Tait’s new memoir, Far Horizons, which the Ewingsdale author is launching at The Book Room in Byron Bay on Friday night.

The book is divided into three parts. The first, War, explores his time in the Navy. The second, Escape, traces his attempts to self-medicate the trauma and guilt of war through hedonism and oblivion in South America and Asia. The third, Peace, tells the story of how he and his Californian-born wife, Kaitlin, decided to dedicate their lives to doing good in the world after meeting and falling in love in Spain.

The pair were both 24 when they moved to East Africa with no job or income.

“We just took a one-way flight to Kenya, paid to volunteer initially and then quickly found ourselves living in a Tanzanian township and running a high school for at-risk kids,” Tait said. “We lived in a shack like everyone else did, had malaria five times, ate the same food as everyone else. It was very grassroots stuff.”

Far Horizons was structurally edited by Alexis Washam, who also edited Sally Rooney’s Normal People, and copy-edited by Michael McConnell, who has worked on Elizabeth Gilbert’s books.

“I brought on a local writing coach, Nina Karnikowski, who had a connection to Alexis,” Tait said. “Hat in hand, I reached out to Alexis, and she agreed to take part in the structural edit.

 

“I sometimes say that the book is Eat, Pray, Love with guns, and most people seem to connect with the description quickly. I see Elizabeth Gilbert’s book as a memoir that really made a mark in the last few decades — one that plenty of people can remember. Elizabeth’s book is a coming-of-age story, of someone finding their true self, in her case through Italian food, Balinese yoga and romance; and mine with war in the Persian Gulf, romance in Spain and purpose in Africa.”

Tait said he was inspired to live a purposeful and adventurous life after reading The Power of One as a teenager, and he hopes Far Horizons will inspire others in the same way.

He and Kaitlin settled in the Northern Rivers eight years ago to raise their two children but still have a love of adventure. In 2026, the family plans to rent out their home and travel the world for a year.

“We are going to live in 12 countries across the year, to show our boys what it’s like to live in different places,” he said.

Aaron Tait will launch Far Horizons at The Book Room in Byron Bay at 6pm on Friday, November 14. Register via Eventbrite.