If you’ve never visited the Greek island of Hydra in winter (yes, winter), an entertaining day reading Shelley Dark’s debut novel will have you searching for flights – or elevating the captivating destination to the top of your bucket list.
Following its release in November 2024, Hydra in Winter rocketed to number one on Amazon Australia in the categories of Travel Writing, Humour Essay and Solo Travel, but it’s so much more than a travel memoir.
It’s also a book about Shelley’s mission to uncover the story of Ghikas Voulgaris, her husband’s great-great-grandfather. It’s a journey of self-discovery and the realisation that, yes, at age 70-plus, she could become an author. Her amusing reflections on ageing will also leave you smiling.
On page 13, she writes, “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to follow any advice on ageing gracefully in the conventional sense – I’d rather channel my inner tornado.” And on page 23, “I always thought retirement meant slowing down, but I prefer the adrenaline rush of creation… I’ve always been more of a cork waiting to pop.”
As I found out during my interview with Shelley at her Marcus Beach home, she is so effervescent and bubbly that the analogy of a cork waiting to pop is spot on! Shelley is also fiercely independent and has an inquiring mind.
“My father was a bank manager so my childhood was spent in rural Queensland towns, and we would only spend three years in each town,” she says.
“I think that shaped me enormously because every three years I had a chance to reinvent myself. It was an opportunity to start again, which made me very resilient and independent. I went to Ipswich Grammar as a boarder in my high school years and I was always questioning the rules.”
After marrying her husband, John, she became a farmer’s wife raising cattle on the Granite Belt. “I had always wanted to write, but when you’re living on a farm, there is no time. I was a mad gardener and spent every spare minute gardening.”
At that time, Shelley’s writing was limited to editing her garden club’s notes and she was on the publications committee for a guidebook produced by Open Gardens Australia.
She also did some interviews for a coffee table book they published and wrote a few gardening articles for Country Style magazine.
“My plan for retirement was frantic – I wanted to learn how to play bridge, travel and write. I know this sounds morbid, but I could see death coming towards me, however I had this huge basket of things I wanted to do. I still have that feeling of time being precious and just wanting to make the most of it.
“When we started travelling after retirement I was dabbling in Instagram and would write diaries of my travels and sell them to my Instagram followers.
“So, every day I would take heaps of photos, and at night, I would write for my followers. That’s how it started.”
Shelley describes herself as “a bit of an obsessive”, so researching the story of Ghikas – a Greek pirate from Hydra who narrowly escaped death to become Australia’s first Greek convict – became her new obsession. Her husband gave her an air ticket to Greece for her birthday and she set off, solo, to see what she could find.
“At first, I just wanted to find out about Ghikas – why was he a pirate, was he a bad man? I mean his blood is in John’s body and our children’s. That was my driving force then,” she says.
She did not expect to fall in love with Hydra and the people. “It’s just a magical place and I’m so glad I went there in winter when it’s deserted. I have photos where there are virtually no people, perhaps a donkey and one man with a trolley. You can’t help but exhale.”
Each night, Shelley would write about her visits to the island’s archives, the long hikes along deserted trails with spellbinding views of the Argolic Gulf, her delightful apartment overlooking the port, the cats, donkeys, local cuisine and the charming people who taught her to enjoy each day at a leisurely pace. She soon felt a deep connection to the island and its history.
She also started to realise that she was “no longer a tourist photographer with a notebook, but that she was writing with a purpose”.
On page 88, she notes, “Knowing that writing is waiting for me at the end of each day feels like a delicious indulgence. Shaping the thoughts into sentences had become the heartbeat of my days.”
Although she didn’t find all the answers about Ghikas in Hydra, she did soak up the island so that she could write about the place he came from. Since then, she’s revisited Hydra and travelled to Malta, Portsmouth and the National Archives in Kew to find the information she needed for her next book, Son of Hydra, a historical fiction novel that will be published in November 2025.
Shelley is still getting used to being described as a book author and a sought-after speaker. She’ll be on stage at the Greek Festival, which will be held in Sydney on April 27, and she has already been featured in a national publication.
Asked what her husband thinks about her new career, Shelley says he is “terribly supportive and really proud”.
“The day after Hydra in Winter was published, he told me he was driving along and came to a traffic light and shouted to no one in particular, ‘My wife is a published author’.”
She is indeed – and she’s also a really good one.