Peering into Sydney's past at Hyde Park Barracks

A sunny day in Sydney has a way of distracting visitors from the city's dark beginnings. But if you're lucky enough to spend a little time in New South Wales' dazzling capital, I'd urge you to explore a couple of sites paying tribute to its history: in particular, visit Hyde Park Barracks.

Sailing past the iconic Sydney Opera House on the way to Manly. Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

Visiting Australia's convict sites elicits complex emotions. It would be impossible not to sympathise with the harrowing conditions suffered by convicts transported from the British Isles and then enslaved. However, there are flashes of hope in the stories of those who finished their terms (or escaped) and then began new lives.

The red-brick exterior of Hyde Park Barracks Museum in Sydney. Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page. 

Hyde Park Barracks was built in 1819 to house convict men and boys. Thirty years later it would also be the first stop for women immigrants fresh on Australia's shores. It later went through various incarnations -- a shelter for homeless women, even office space -- but is now dedicated to the history of the convicts who passed through.

Traces of barracks' original signs and papers remain, despite repeated attempts to give the building a makeover.
Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

Convict labour was backbreaking, and punishments for even minor infractions were grim. Being flogged until you bled with a cat o' nine tails, or flung into solitary confinement, was a lucky escape. Something as serious as trying to escape your assigned labour would land you in painfully heavy leg-irons for months on end. Worse still, you could be shipped to the notorious Port Arthur.

Inmates slept mere inches from each other in rough hammocks.
Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

But amid the miserable grind of life at Hyde Park Barracks, ingenuity still thrived. Convicts carved dice and game pieces out of bone, sheltered from the sun under hand-woven cabbage-leaf hats, and fashioned gambling tokens out of wood. Even in a place that saw as much pain as Hyde Park Barracks, there were glimmers of joy and hope.

Find it: Hyde Park Barracks Museum, Macquarie Street, NSW 2000 Australia
Learn more: www.hht.net.au/museums/hyde_park_barracks_museum

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Rila Monastery, Bulgaria: an unexpected trip to Hell

Sometimes, you arrive at a darkly disturbing travel site when you least expect it.

Standing in the courtyard of Rila Monastery. Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

I had wanted to visit Rila Monastery in Bulgaria for a long time. I saw pictures of its striped columns and enormous domes, a strange and beautiful contrast with the vast Rila Mountains, and wanted to see this dramatic sight for myself.

Riotous colours in the archways of Rila Monastery. Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

What I didn't expect was how macabre the artwork at Rila would be. The initial impression of most visitors is to be dazzled by the colours in Rila Monastery. But look closer and you'll see tortured souls adorning the walls, being drowned in lakes of fire, swallowed by dragons, and ushered down to Hell.

A gruesome depiction of sinners being dragged to Hell (while long-dead believers awake in their coffins to be summoned to Heaven). Note the livestock with body parts in their mouths. Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

St Ivan of Rila, who founded the monastery in the 10th century, was a recluse in the ascetic tradition. In the solitude of the Rodopi Mountains, Ivan Rilski had plenty of time to ponder the Fall of Man.

This unusual ceiling fresco shows King Herod's soldiers butchering babies, per the New Testament story of the Massacre of the Innocents. Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

Faced with isolation, it's hard not to be confronted by the uglier aspects of human nature. But Ivan Rilski is known mostly for his affinity with the natural world, numerous miracles, and taking on a life of cave-dwelling hardship to purify his soul. It would be hundreds of years after his death, in 1846, before the monastery's remarkable murals would be completed.

What's worse, a river of fire or being gobbled by a monster? Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

The very best of Bulgaria's painters and architects perfected Rila Monastery, and their inspiration draws heavily from the Bible's most nightmarish content. Strolling around the monastery today, you'll chance upon bloody scenes from the New Testament, such as the Massacre of the Innocents, right through to the surreal horror of the Book of Revelation - multi-headed dragons, beasts from the sea and an agonised angel of woe.

Almost like a comic strip - another of Rila's murals.  Image © Anita Isalska. See more on my Flickr page.

This remote monastery is a place of peace and retreat, but it is also an unflinching insight into believers' terror of the final judgement.

Find it: there are buses to Rila village from Sofia, Blagoevgrad and Dupnitsa. Alternatively, Sofia is full of tour operators willing to take you on a day-trip. Rila Monastery Shuttle will throw in an excursion  to Sofia's Boyana Church.
Learn more: www.rilamonastery.pmg-blg.com

Welcome to Travels Darkly

You hear the description 'dark tourist' a lot when you spend your travels exploring famous cemeteries, nuclear disaster zones and wartime sights. It's usually said with a whiff of suspicion. Why would anyone spend their holiday time visiting locations connected with tragic events, inhuman acts or morbid mysteries? And moreover, doesn't dark tourism teeter on the brink of voyeurism and disrespect?

Why be a dark tourist?

To me, history and human behaviour are light and dark. For every splendid medieval church, there's a story of religious oppression and poverty. Like it or not, practically every modern city harbours a history of pain or misery, whether it's a wartime legacy, the plague or infamous crimes. Should you bypass that aspect of a destination when you visit? I prefer not to - and I'm fascinated by what I have seen and learned along the way.

Isn't there something exploitative or wrong about dark tourism?

That depends what you do at the destination. Most visitors to tragic sites do so with sensitivity and respect - although travellers posing for a grinning picture in Auschwitz does happen. For me and many others, the urge to travel darkly originates in a spirit of open-mindedness. I want to hear the truth of a destination, even if it's upsetting to hear. I want to understand history's darker moments, because it feels important to learn from them. And I want to acknowledge tragic events and be part of the activity that commemorates awful happenings. Being faced with dark tourism sites is confronting, and it forces you to question yourself. What would I have written on the walls of this prison? My own problems are dwarfed by the magnitude of others, and it shames me into wanting to live a better life.

Aside from how much there is to learn from these places, they can also be astonishingly beautiful in their own right. And the contrast between the beauty of the scenery and an awful event that occurred there - take Chernobyl in the rolling Ukrainian countryside - also fuels a traveller to consider what they are seeing.

How do you travel darkly?

For me, the single most important thing you can do is attain a balance. When I visited Hiroshima, like most visitors I spent a lot of time at the peace museum and A-bomb dome, learning about the shocking experience of the people.

You know what else I did? I hung out.

I shopped, feasted on the local speciality of grilled oysters, checked out the castle, went on a bar hop and met some of the friendliest people I've encountered anywhere in the world. Because doing dark tourism badly is failing to see past the morbid history to what the destination is today. In Hiroshima's case, it is one of the most vibrant and uplifting cities I've ever visited.

I hope to explore a lot more of this paradoxical territory in this blog, feature some fascinating destinations and look at the rise of dark tourism along the way.

Thank you for reading, and if you have any thoughts or suggestions, leave them in the comments or join me on Twitter @travelsdarkly.