On the ABC Perth Radio Breakfast Show we recently discussed the continued popularity of dark tourism.

It doesn’t have to be morbid but it does have to involve death in wars, disasters, murders, terrorism or assassinations.

The darker side of history has meat on the bone and the gristle as well.  We try to put ourselves in the shoes of the fallen and maybe sometimes in the shoes of those responsible.

It’s about confirming our fears, confronting the reality of the history books we grew up with and perhaps providing closure on those images we’ve seen on tv’s in our own lounge room, like that Paris tunnel in 1997 or the New York City skyline in 2001.

The rise in tourist numbers at destinations such as Chernobyl, Fukushima, the concentration camps of World War II, prisoner of war camps in Sandakan and Ranau and the killing fields of Cambodia are all examples of a phenomenon that is attracting those seeking a broader understanding of the events that took place at those sites.

In Australia, many events and sites may be seen as dark tourism.  Off the Western Australian coast on the Abrolhos Islands in 1629 the Dutch East India Company ship Batavia ran aground and the ensuing mutiny saw 125 men, women and children brutally slaughtered. The islands can be visited for an understanding of these events and there are also museum exhibitions in Geraldton and Fremantle, displaying grisly skulls marked with the slashes of the mutineers swords.

In Snowtown, South Australia, the little bank where the bodies in the barrels were discovered in the late 1990’s is a popular stop for people wanting to take a quick pic.

Most issues in our lives have a line that we decide we will or won’t cross.  Dark tourism has many lines that cross in different directions, challenging our sense of morbidity, appropriateness and thresholds of respect.

It’s a great topic for publication and radio and sure to get you thinking about your own dark tourism bucket list.