Just imagine, if you will, that you could read a humorous version of the Pentateuch, written by a particularly witty in-law of a descendant of Abraham, who peppers her pages with an innumerable quantity of puns and allows you to join her as she retraces the steps of the patriarchs.
This is exactly the experience you are presented with when called upon by author Shelley Dark to sojourn with her in “Hydra in Winter.” Her narrative technique is one which co-opts you and makes you complicit in her journey of discovery, compelling you to trust her as your guide, by the simple act of turning the page. She disarms you, not in the least by calling you “buddy,” but also because her lucid, chatty, effortlessly accessible prose allows the ready to transcend time, space, season, and even Greek pronunciation, for which she displays remarkable aptitude.
The author of the recently published “Hydra in Winter,” is on a biblical mission. If Genesis traces the journey of patriarch Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to the Promised Land, whence we all come, spiritually or otherwise, “Hydra in Winter” is also a Testament, attempting to trace the journey of one of our own community patriarchs from his homeland of Hydra, to Australia. Shelly Dark is perhaps best placed to do so, because her husband John, is a direct descendant of Gkikas Voulgaris, also known as Jigger Bulgary, one of the seven first Greeks to arrive in Australia, having been transported here in 1829 after a conviction for piracy.
The author’s attempt to trace our illustrious common ancestor’s journey back to its source in Hydra is an inspired one, not in the least because in doing so she puts her finger on the nub of our own ontopathology when it comes to our founding fathers and our identity as Greek Australians. On the one hand our national narrative renders our pirates as heroes: bold men who sailed the seas on a quest to liberate and defend their nation, defeat their enemies and compound their foes with feats of ingenuity, audacity and downright genius. On the other hand, Greek-Australian scholars have taken issue with a discourse that appears to grant their compatriots a convict heritage. It is after all, before the story of the seven pirates was widely known, an absence of criminality that comprised one of the elements that differentiated us from the dominant group’s narrative. Consequently those scholars point to efforts to present the seven pirates as convicts as symptomatic of a tendency of the ruling class to cast aspersions upon our pedigree, seeking to transfer to us, their own identity, possibly in order to make us complicit in their violent seizure of indigenous land and the assumption of its sovereignty. Is this then the original sin that is common to all of us?
Happily, Shelley Dark does not deal in the abstruse and the obscure, although hers is a pen that is as meticulous in recording details as it is in defying stereotypes. Hers is not the travelogue or indeed the journey of the tourist, peddling tired tropes about bouzouki, tzatziki and retsina and indeed on many of her inspired asides, she expertly is able to open-heartedly play with the expectations and deep seated cliches that accompany a westerner’s (and not a few latter Greek-Australian generation’s ) understanding of Greece, (her quip about breaking plates, but not the ones off the wall, is a case in point). Instead, the cajoles us to accompany her to not touristic-Greece: Hydra in the off season, which far from being a sun-drenched paradise is icy cold, and where almost everything is shut. This is the real Greece, inhabited by real people and this place, as desolate as Ur itself, is the topos in which Shelley’s drama will unfold.
The narrative charmingly unfolds in andante prose, a walking pace to accompany our own steps as we explore the hibernating island. We learn that half the island is related to the Voulgaris clan, which has played a significant role in the Greek Revolution. Along the way, we also meet some remarkable elemental characters who assume Titanic proportions in the way that appear to inhabit in complete harmony with their surroundings, are inscrutable, incomprehensible and unpredictable but nonetheless, are warm-hearted, generous, omnipresent and willing to provide advice, hospitality and assistance.
In true Indiana Jones style, Shelley Dark’s exertions form a backstory in itself. She and the reader explore every nook and cranny of the island, which is rightly called Hydra since like the mythological creature of same name, (and let us not forget that the Lernaian Hydra was killed by Heracles – which coincidentally or not, was the name of Voulgaris’ (alleged) pirate ship) each of her lines of inquiry give rise to another three, as she searches for a lost book that contains the history of the Voulgaris Family.
The reader conjures in vain for a dusty, weighty tome, silver clasp securing its many secrets. Instead, the object of the quest is “The Boulgaris Family of Hydra,” written by Ioannis Papamanolis in 1931. After a series of misadventures, the book is found exactly where it as supposed to be on the island for after all the Truth is not only out there but also lies within, in both sense of the word and much more can be learned about a story from its construction and the motivation behind its construction than from the events related themselves. Especially so, since the book mentions a Damianos Ghikas whose life and times seems to mysteriously mirror Ghikas Voulgaris’ own, though they predate his by a few decades…
Along the way, the author traverses another path of discovery, that of discovery of the self, something that seems to be uniquely the preserve of the visitor to a land whose completely unself-conscious native inhabitants have been born without an inner monologue. The climax of the novel where the author proclaims: “I hear the whisper of the Greek Chorus on the waves almost as if the island is speaking to me: “She stood in the shadow of a pirate, yet she found the outline of her own,” is as profound as it is side-splittingly funny, coming as it does after a heavy earlier dose of pirate jokes.
For it is this that makes “Hydra in Winter,” a singularly unique and endearing book: It’s quirky, quintessentially self-deprecating and ironic Aussie humour. The text is literally dripping with quips, asides, wry observations and eye-wringing dad jokes. This is an author who loves a challenge, will test herself to the utmost and still in Antipodean fashion, refuses to take herself seriously. Consequently, she is a boon travel companion: knowledgeable, positive, entertaining and completely free from the psychological baggage that often afflicts the more emotionally vampiric fellow traveller that one may chance upon during one’s travels and from whom the only escape is to shut the book. Fascinatingly, she freely admits to being as afraid of us as we are of her.
By contrast, “Hydra in Winter” is a real page turner and if Shelley Dark, in searching for Ghikas has come to realisation that she is an aspiring novelist, she had better drop the adjective qualifying the noun with due speed and urgency. Tantalisingly, her story ends with a cliffhanger – after all her sleuthing and archival work on Hydra, leaving us high and dry (if you’ll pardon the pun), inviting us to come with her to the place where the Original Sin of our community took place: the island of Malta where the trial of Ghikas Voulgaris for piracy was held and where he was convicted and sentenced. Knowing what I know both about the trial and the history of the Greeks of Malta, I can’t wait.
Ultimately, “Hydra in Winter” causes us to reflect upon the traditional differences in the way people understand history. Shelley Dark enters into a world of people who can tell you in intimate detail what happened to Alexander the Great over two thousand years ago but for whom the details of their family just a few centuries ago is completely obscure. Perhaps there is some solace and security in the historical amnesia that seems to frame our perspective. Nevertheless, with Bertrand Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness” as her inspiration, Shelley Dark engages in writing as being “about the sheer, ridiculous fun of making things up and calling it work.” And we are all the richer for it.
