Beyond the Mardi Gras: The pleasures and perils of a wander through Darlinghurst

MERCEDES Maguire explores the pleasures and perils of a wander through one of Sydney’s most popular and polarising suburbs.

Fanny Chan at Boon Chocolates in Darlinghurst.

MENTION the Sydney neighbourhood of Darlinghurst and you’re likely to get a varied response.

To some it’s still a grubby inner-city den of laneways you must avoid, to others it’s a sophisticated hub of wine bars and restaurants. To many, it’s home to Australia’s biggest gay and lesbian community.

In fact, Darlinghurst is all of these things — a mash-up of its colourful history, which can still be seen in the suburb’s backstreets and main boulevards.

I got to know the iconic suburb on a walking tour. We started on busy Victoria St, which runs from the neon Coca-Cola sign at the top of William St to Oxford St and our first stop was Boon Chocolates, run by Filipino brother and sister team Alex and Fanny Chan.

Fanny Chan at Boon Chocolates in Darlinghurst.

Food technologist Alex Chan with his sister Fanny, a chef and chocolatier.

With a background in chemistry, Fanny turned her back on a traditional career in science to become a chocolatier. She spends her days making delicious flavour-combinations blending ingredients such as balsamic vinegar with strawberry praline, milk chocolate ganache with lemongrass, and my favourite, ginger and mandarin.

Alex tells of the shops many famed customers, such as Baz Luhrmann and two unforgettable visits by Saudi royals who had the shop cleared by a handful of bodyguards before they entered. Not far from Victoria St is Darlinghurst Gaol. Built between 1822 and 1843, it now houses the National Art School, but visions of the eerie past are visible everywhere.

The site is like a mini Port Arthur with a chapel at the epicentre surrounded by a laundry, hospital, workshops, officer’s quarters, prison cells, morgue, a governor’s residence and courthouse. The site operated as a jail until 1914 when prisoners were removed to Long Bay.

The Old Darlinghurst Gaol now houses the National Art School.

The Love Tilly Devine bar in a laneway behind Crown St.

Henry Lawson was an inmate there in 1908, incarcerated for non-payment of alimony. Other prisoners included Henry Louis Bertrand, dubbed the “Demon Dentist of Wynyard Square”, jailed for killing his lover’s husband in 1866. And the notorious Louisa Collins, who became the only woman hanged there in 1889 for killing two husbands and a child with rat poison.

We exited the site on to Oxford St, considered by many to be the beating heart of Darlinghurst. In an attempt to tidy up Oxford St, the City of Sydney recently offered tenants and shop owners a Shopfront Improvement Grant of up to $6000 to remove unsightly roller shutters, broken signage, apply anti-graffiti treatments, paint shop fronts, repair awnings and fix window display shelves. The council also launched the Creative Spaces program in 2012 to help artists and creative enterprises find a location to exhibit or perform their work. The program also had the added bonus of bringing a bit of culture and creativity back to Oxford St.

Pocket Bar off Crown St in Darlinghurst.

Prominent Darlinghurst underworld figure Tilly Devine.

One such enterprise is Platform 72, a beautiful art gallery which opened two years ago and has since showcased about 250 Australian artists and designers.

A few doors down is He Made She Made, a concept gallery that opened by Laura Lay in January 2012. Lay curates shows involving art and design and has displayed the works of about 300 artists.

Channel Nine’s crime drama series Underbelly: Razor popularised the seedy side of Darlinghurst and surrounding suburbs during the inter-war period when vice queens Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh controlled the city through their “razor gangs”.

While trendy wine bars and restaurants have replaced the sly grog shops and brothels, the suburb still retains a glimmer of its dark past.

Despite the fact I had visited some of the choicest establishments in the city that evening, my step did quicken as I passed the dark laneways walking back to my car several blocks away.

A dark alleyway is still a dark alleyway, regardless of the $1 million-plus property values.

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Originally published as Beyond the Mardi Gras: The pleasures and perils of a wander through Darlinghurst