100 •Metro Magazine 195 | © ATOM
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tal into the strange vertex of the mining and sex industries
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stores were almost exhausted by the end of the 1890s dur
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deeper reserves, with the Fimiston Open Pit established by
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last original brothel, outliving this period of tumultuous
industrial change.
Having received production and development support
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the dominant currents of much Australian factual program
ming by presenting the history of sex work’s ties to mining
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sex worker who, despite their differences, share an unu
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Haywood’s new angle on this old story about the collision
of sex and capital.
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when it comes to sex. ‘Well, we offer massage and oral
sex,’ she says to a caller in her clipped British accent.
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sex was just “natural” sex. I mean, there’s the missionary
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like a rooting dog, or wanting to put all sorts of things up
into women’ – she shakes her head with familiar resignation- ‘I can’t see why that would excite people.’ Accompanied
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simply ‘waiting for the right bloke to come along’.
Epstein’s film suggests that
the line between exploitation
and empowerment is much
finer than what much of the
newer discourse around sex
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herself as ‘a bad girl with a bad background’, and light
heartedly alludes to a personal history of homelessness
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I think of this house as like my home – this is where things
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gest that sex work can be congruent with a caring domes
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wide shots give us some major clues about the complica
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herself on the street to bring in customers. Business isn’t
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A sleek, irreverent sequence of archival news clips illumi
nates the sex trade’s history in the town: headlines declar
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footage showing the recent slowdown in mining caused by
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city narrative that departs radically from the usual positive
political discourse around mining in Australia that speaks
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Footage is arranged in such a way as to point to the hy
pocrisy of politicians who are supportive of mining, but are
in denial or condemning of the complex social issues that
go with it. A second hypocrisy is found in the widespread
disgust that is generally directed at sex workers rather
than the men who buy access to those women’s bodies.
Western Australian politicians are shown debating the
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commercial sexual services and rescinded in 2000,^1 as well
as the possibility for brothels to apply for licences, though
the long legal evolution of sex work isn’t always made clear
to the viewer. While one madam wonders why nobody else
in society is made to apply for a licence before having sex,
the picture painted by3GD /HMJ 'NTRDsuggests a com
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to Carmel’s and other madams’ dismay. Though largely
abstract to the politicians who debate them, these legali
ties are shown to have profound effects on those within the
industry: what happens to sex workers’ safety when their
employment is sent underground or used for barter and
banter in political rhetoric?
Cinema has expounded on the thematic link between
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,HKKDQ(1971) is known for both its atmosphere of ter
rible sadness and the strength of its narrative’s implantation
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