The first tour of Wollongong’s dark side last week took participants on a trail of crime, corruption and catastrophe from the city’s colonial past to the present day.
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From the death of early settler Captain Charles Waldron at the hands of two female convict servants in 1834 to the murder of Dragan Sekuljica at the former Splashes nightclub in 2007, the region’s history has been littered with murder and mayhem.
Mining and industrial accidents have also marred the city’s past, from the 1902 Mount Kembla mine disaster which claimed the lives of 96 workers to the 1975 coke oven explosion at Port Kembla which killed three men.
It’s this ‘‘dark side’’ of Wollongong that historian Dr Glenn Mitchell aimed to showcase on his bus tour which kicked off with more than 30 participants on Friday.
‘‘I’d been playing with the idea of documenting the history of Wollongong’s underbelly in some way for about 10 years,’’ Dr Mitchell, a University of Wollongong lecturer, said.
‘‘I wanted to find a way to show Wollongong through the lens of crime and the consequences of industry – to look at the city through a new set of eyes.
‘‘Every town has its secrets, has its underbelly, has its darker side – and so I created this tour to give people a warts-and-all history of Wollongong.’’
There was a captive market for the three-hour tour which was run at the end of the Australian History Association’s annual conference, held this month at the University of Wollongong.
But alongside the historians from around the country who hopped on board were a number of Illawarra residents keen to know more about their region’s past.
‘‘I moved here about four years ago and have heard bits and pieces about various crimes and events,’’ Wollongong resident Leta Webb said, ‘‘but this was an opportunity to find out some more of the details and the background. It’s been a real eye-opener.’’
The tour included 11 stops mainly in the city centre, but also took in Port Kembla and Mount Kembla. Dr Mitchell plans to run regular tours to include other notorious crimes and events that have occurred on our doorstep.
Tour participant, Sydney City Council historian Dr Lisa Murray, said the event was part of a growing trend for ‘‘dark tourism’’.
‘‘Tours like this really bring together the history of a place and the community that have lived there – they really bring history alive,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s part of a broader movement of looking at history in all its facets – not just the big, the grand, the firsts, but looking at the nastier sides of history.
‘‘It taps into that public fascination with crime and gore that has been around for generations.’’
Also aboard was West Australian crime history lecturer Leigh Straw who said such tours gave ‘‘ordinary people’’ a glimpse into the seedy side of life.
‘‘When most ordinary people think about crime, it comes from film and television and from the press,’’ she said.
‘‘What tours like this do – and indeed shows like Underbelly that are so popular – is take crime to a whole other level of entertainment.
‘‘They allow people who have never engaged in crime to see how the other side lives – to actually see where crimes have occurred.’’