Award-winning Australian author
Stories of starting again
with heart, humour, and optimism.
ABOUT ME
After a lifetime raising cattle on Queensland’s Granite Belt, my husband and I swapped the bush for the beach at the Sunshine Coast. My all-consuming passion is writing, which doesn't leave enough time for travel or photography! I’m a member of the ALLWRiTE Club, a writers‘ group based all over Australia, and also Writers on the Coast Noosa—both generous communities of writers whose work and thinking continually stretches my own.
My books include Hydra in Winter (2024), awarded a Gold Medal at the Global Book Awards 2025 (Biographical—Traveler & Explorer), still Amazon #1 a year after publication. It's about my trip to the Greek island of Hydra to uncover my husband’s ancestor, Ghikas Voulgaris—Australia’s first Greek convict pioneer, and a pirate. And Son of Hydra (2025), awarded a Silver Medal at the same awards (Historical Fiction), inspired by his extraordinary life. I'm currently working on Daughter of Cork, the story of his Irish wife, along with an exciting new narrative non-fiction titled After The Sensible Years: On Starting Again When The World Says You're Finished. My short fiction appears in anthologies.
If you’d like to keep in touch—and maybe join me on the next adventure—I’d love you tsign up to receive news on this website.
My ultimate mission is the pursuit of the perfect cream bun—but sadly, they're a threatened species.
He thought a man’s worth
was measured in ships.
Until he lost everything.
Read more
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
Hydra in Winter is one hell of an entertaining read.
—Samuel Bernard, The Weekend Australian Review
Reading Hydra in Winter is like drinking a bottomless glass of champagne—bubbly, refreshing, and bound to make you laugh.
—Kyra Geddes, author of The Story Thief
A thoroughly delightful and entertaining read, with more substance than a light-hearted holiday book.
—Barbie Robinson, Living Arts Canberra
Hydra in Winter is a real page-turner.
—Dean Kalimniou, poet, essayist, cultural commentator, columnist Neos Kosmos
High stakes action, sweeping landscapes and a spirited love story—Son of Hydra has it all. Ghikas emerges as the anti-authoritarian hero Australians love best.
—Kyra Geddes, author of The Story Thief.
Dark’s masterly portrayal of their companionship and brotherhood is rendered with such intimacy... that Hydra itself seems to pulse through their speech.
—Dean Kalimniou, poet, essayist, cultural commentator, columnist Neos Kosmos
Dark’s vivid prose, attentive characterisation and commitment to ethical storytelling combine to produce a work that honours the complexity of the past without succumbing to nostalgia or triumphal mythmaking.
— Dean Kalimniou, poet, essayist, cultural commentator, columnist Neos Kosmos
A transportive and beautifully written story that needed to be told.
—Yvette Manessis Corporon, US Emmy award-winning and international bestselling author of Daughter of Ruins
As cinematic as Master and Commander, as heartfelt as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
—Peter Barber, internationally awarded and bestselling author of The Parthenon Series.
Once you start reading Son of Hydra, you cannot put it down.
—Heraklis Kalogerakis, Vice Admiral Hellenic Navy (retd)
ABOUT HYDRA IN WINTER
When the summer crowds leave, the magic begins. I arrive solo on the car-free island of Hydra to hunt down a family secret: the truth about my husband’s ancestor—a Greek pirate who became Australia’s first Greek convict.
Armed with an umbrella, a cashmere scarf, and zero Greek, I settle into a shipowner’s mansion on the harbour. To the clip-clop of donkeys on stone steps, I explore the island, dive into its archives, and let the warmth of Hydra’s locals turn my urgent quest into a slow-travel adventure—and the beginning of my passion to write the pirate’s story.
For readers who enjoy Greek island escapes, humorous travel memoirs, solo adventures, and true stories full of curiosity, serendipity, and joie de vivre.
ABOUT SON OF HYDRA
Sydney, 1829.
Ghikas Voulgaris, proud and reckless son of a powerful Greek shipping family, is certain life will bend to his will. But when he and his friends attack a supply ship during the Greek War of Independence, everything shatters. His punishment is swift and public: transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales as a convicted pirate.
Stripped of his name, influence, and friends, Ghikas becomes nobody. He must bow to men who neither know nor care who he was. And Mary—a fierce Irish orphan who answers to no one—is everything he doesn’t want in a woman.
Ghikas believes he’ll serve his sentence and return to Hydra to reclaim his birthright. But the real battle—discovering who he is, where he belongs, and what makes a man—has only just begun
Click here for more on the research behind the story of Son of Hydra.
