Kalgoorlie and That House in Hay Street

I had a dream last night, made up of fragments of the day as all dreams are but also encompassing a deep unease about an experience we’d had.  The dream began with some naughty aboriginal children plus one of mine tearing across one of the wide camel friendly roads of Norseman.  I was worried and flew in hot pursuit.  I found them deeply absorbed in playing with little Leggo cars on the real road with other traffic driving by as best it could.  One of the children was lying dead.  “He got hit” my child said casually.  And I woke at that.

But the experience was a visit to a “historical brothel” on Hay Street in Kalgoorlie which used to be the containment area for prostitution in the town until not so very long ago. There was plenty of money to be made from gold miners far from home. But there was a price to pay for making it. The girls had to live in the brothels and were not allowed into town alone lest they solicit there and cause anxiety to respectable townsfolk.  Police could do spot checks at night to make sue everyone was present.  Girls could not live in town once they’d been prostitutes unless they married a client, which they sometimes did.

But this information was not what troubled me.  Perhaps I should go back to how the tour began.  I rang to book and was answered by a cultured, friendly and very sexy voice.  “Just come to the door at a quarter to three” she said “ and I accept cards or cash” Something about the way she said it made it seem like a sleazy transaction.

Grant and I found our way to shabby Hay Street and located Questa Casa, with its four doors painted pink, one of which was open.   An elegant woman of a certain age beckoned us in and we joined a group of about fifteen all tucked in a little room behind the counter.  All sorts we were, young and old, male and female, different nationalities too.  The lady came in and sorted us like children, short ones in the front and tall ones in the back and had us sit on chairs.  She sat down herself.  “I am the madam here” she said in a soft and pleasant voice.  “We used to have four working rooms but now we just have two”.  She told us how a couple of decades ago she had been very depressed after being widowed and thought it was her hormones.  Her doctor said it wasn’t her hormones at all but she did need something to do.  She spotted the ad offering the brothel in Kalgoorlie for sale and bought it.  When she told her doctor what she had done he said “But I meant charity work!”  She made us laugh and got us under her spell. 

She showed us how the brothel, along with all the others in Hay Street (the rest now shut down) had a high iron fence with doors in it leading into what were known as “the starting stalls” The girls would sit on chairs inside the wrought iron inner door and the gentlemen could negotiate privately from the cubicles.  If things went well they were let through the door into the brothel proper. 

We were given a tour of two rooms one of which was the domination room, appropriately (and somewhat theatrically) equipped.  A large teddy bear was elaborately chained for our education,  “They come because they cannot forgive themselves” she said “It is our job to hurt them but without doing any harm”  That sadness came into her eyes as it had when she told us about being a widow.

We went back to the close little room in which we began and she organized us again by height and began to tell stories of different sorts – the policeman who tried to trap her into sending a girl to the Exchange Hotel.  Because of the containment rule this was not allowed and if she had agreed he would have been able to shut her down.  The narcoleptic client who apparently died on the bed but sprang to life after the police and an ambulance had been called.  All sorts of  tales as well as a description of how her girls got clients to climax with minimum effort.  Because of her gentle humorous manner none of us doubted her for a second. 

After we left I felt uneasy.  If it was all true it seemed like the prostitution of prostitution.  There seemed something a bit gross about us tourists listening in to salacious but essentially humorous  tales of a trade which must take a huge toll on its workers and surely couldn’t all be quite such fun.  At one point she asked us to guess the maximum number of clients that a Dutch girl had handled in a night.  So we were playing guessing games now.  But her power over us was such that we did what we were told.

I think my dream of kids (us tourists) playing with Leggo cars amongst the real traffic emanated from the moral issue of whether you should be entertained by real life sadness. Naughty us, were playing in the road and should know better. History – well that’s another thing. But this woman and the way she handled us seemed so real.

 Very slowly it began to dawn on me that perhaps she was just a superlative actress and maybe there was a different widowed  madam next day.  Perhaps it was all a splendid con.  But doubt lingered.  There was a notice outside saying the place was open for trade from six pm.  I suggested Grant go along as an undercover client and clear the matter up once and for all, but he said no – perhaps we could ask at the police station instead.  In the event a lovely man in the tourist office told us the rather pathetic truth. 

Yes she was a madam and had run brothels in Queensland but no – Questa Casa was no longer an active brothel because  girls these days formed syndicates and got themselves places around town to avoid having to split their earnings with a madam. These days she just gave her three o’clock tours to keep her head above water. I was sort of relieved and stopped feeling ashamed of myself but I was also amazed at our madam’s skill as an actress. Or was it actually not so much acting as living her role in the way that some hoaxers can do.  Never mind the domination room, she had got her way with us – but then of course we had asked for it.