Pay dirt by: Caroline Overington From: The Australian June 30, 2012 12:00AM
IT is 6pm on a Thursday in the West Australian mining town of Karratha and Vicki, the madam at the local brothel, is just back from picking up a young blonde from the airport.
"Angel" is carrying her dinner, a whole roast chicken in a plastic bag, and she's got an air of anticipation about her, much like a young woman about to go on a backpacking holiday. "It's my first time in Karratha," she says after we've been introduced, "but I hope the rumours are true!" And what rumours would they be? "I heard there's plenty of men and they've got plenty of money, they're short of female company and they want to party."
Angel is a FIFO (fly-in, fly-out) prostitute, one of hundreds to descend upon Australia's roaring mining towns - from the Pilbara in the West to the Bowen Basin in central Queensland. From a purely mercantile point of view she has a lot in common with her clients: she lives in one of the eastern states but she's flexible about where she'll work; she's willing to put in long, hard shifts (sex workers can see between 10 and 12 men a night) and she expects to be well rewarded for her efforts. FIFO prostitutes routinely make as much as $10,000 a week, 10 times the average weekly wage.
Angel is here for seven nights' work in Karratha's little brothel called the Port of Call, a three-bedroom, brick-clad building on the local industrial estate, but most FIFO prostitutes prefer to work privately, booking their own rooms in 1970s-style mum-and-dad motels. It might not be everyone's idea of a proper job, but many of the women interviewed for this story were firmly of the view that since prostitution is now either largely legal in Queensland or officially tolerated in WA, touring the boom towns is a perfectly legitimate way to get a slice of the mining pie. But perhaps not for long. A bill before the WA parliament will make most forms of FIFO sex work illegal, while in Queensland, motel owners are pressing the state government for a law that would enable them to ban FIFO sex workers from working at their premises.
Asked what she thinks of this, Angel, 24, a full-time sex worker and stripper, shrugs and says, "Well, some people are busybodies, aren't they? They think their morals are better than mine." She'd be happy to talk more but it's 7pm, the brothel is open and a young miner, still in overalls and steel-capped boots, comes bounding in the door. Angel's first night riding the mining boom has officially begun.
"MEN go to the mines hoping to make money. Women go for the same reason," says University of New England professor John Scott, who has been studying the sex industry for years. "It's part of the frontier tradition. You get a lot of hard-working men, fortunes being made, buildings going up everywhere, bars opening - and prostitutes turn up, hoping to get a piece of the action." It happened during the California gold rush, and in Texas, which had as many girls-in-garters as it did oil rigs. Kalgoorlie in Western Australia was as famous in the late 1800s for its "starting stalls" (corrugated iron sheds, much like old dunnies, where girls offered quickies - they're still there, but they are now more of a tourist attraction) as it was for the mining Super Pit.
The difference now is that sex workers - like miners - don't actually have to move to the mining towns to ply their trade: they can go FIFO. "If you're a sex worker and you've got an ad on the internet or in the local paper and you've got a mobile phone, you're good to go," says Scott, "although it's 'good luck finding a hotel room'."
Sydney-based prostitute "Sweet Jade" - all the names in this story are what one sex worker described as "fake, cheesy, hooker names" - explains how it works: she flew to Perth last month ahead of a two-week tour of the west coast from Albany to Broome with stops in Karratha, Port Hedland and Dampier, all of which have mining camps full of men who are loaded with cash. "It's really quiet in Sydney and Melbourne at the moment but the mining towns are great," Sweet Jade says. "There's heaps of guys, they've got a heap of money, and you won't believe how much they spend. They'll pay for two girls; they'll pay for their mates. They've just come in from four weeks on and what's $600 when they've got $12,000 in the bank?"
Medical bodies in Western Australia and Queensland have raised concerns about the growing rate of sexually transmitted diseases - gonorrhea and syphilis - in some mining areas. But Australian Medical Association Queensland president Dr Richard Kidd is reluctant to blame Australian sex workers. "The local industry is well regulated and they do great education - 'if the condom's not on, it's not on', that kind of thing - and so it's more likely to be blokes earning good money, flying to Thailand, getting drunk on the weekend, picking up something pretty serious, and then bringing it home." Sometimes, he says, they then pass it on to their wives or partners.
However, mining wife Alicia Ranford, who created the popular Mining Family Matters website, says the idea that husbands and fathers "start playing up and going wild" when they arrive in mining towns is offensive to hard-working family men. "I'm sure there are some guys who visit sex workers but miners always seem to get a bad rap," she says, "I can tell you that nobody has ever been on our forum - and we get hundreds of comments every day - saying sex workers are luring their husbands away or anything like that. Mining families worry about other things - how to settle the kids in new schools, and how to make friends in a new town, or how to handle the resentment when Mum is at home folding the washing and trying to get the kids to sleep while Dad is away every fortnight."
Which all raises the question - if the local sex worker industry causes so few problems, why are WA authorities moving to clamp down on it? WA Independent MP Janet Woollard says that most prostitutes are in the industry "against their will or better judgment" and she is campaigning to "put an end to all prostitution in Western Australia, full stop" on the grounds that "brothels exploit young women and young girls, and encourage trafficking". She believes most people are opposed to prostitution. "If you asked mothers if they wanted their daughters to be involved in this kind of work, they would say no."
The Liberal-National government came to power in WA promising to pass a bill giving police more power to prosecute prostitutes in all areas. It will hit FIFO prostitutes hardest: all sex workers will have to be registered with "a relevant authority" and will be able to work only from licensed premises, meaning they won't be able to travel to remote towns and work from motels. There will be strict protocols around advertising in local newspapers - no advertising will be allowed by anyone who doesn't give their real name to the licensing authority - and police will be able to enter any premises to issue on-the-spot fines for both prostitute and client for whatever offences "they reasonably suspect of occurring".
The bill was introduced by WA attorney general Christian Porter just weeks before he quit his post recently to try his luck in the federal sphere, but Woollard still hopes to see it pass later this year during a conscience vote. "The idea that these sorts of things are going on unregulated, it isn't right," she says.
There is an argument that changes to the WA law may well normalise the profession: prostitutes will be licensed and registered like plumbers or accountants; they'll have to work from areas where their business is approved; they'll need ABNs and tax file numbers, and so they'll be no different from anyone else.
But Max Taylor, the director of the Magenta service for sex workers in Perth, says the registration system won't work "because sex workers won't register. You get a small legal industry and a much larger illegal industry, with all the corruption associated with that. I don't honestly understand it. History tells us that a pragmatic approach is best - what is the point of making criminals of people?" Taylor says sex workers are often desperate to avoid rather than make trouble. "The idea that sex workers cause trouble wherever they go - it's been proven again and again to be false," she says. "You hear people saying, 'They're all Asian, they look like they're underage, they're working illegally, they've probably been trafficked' but in my view, making prostitution illegal won't stop people from trafficking, and won't stop child prostitution. Both of those things are already illegal."
The prospect of new laws horrifies Angel. "I basically love what I do," she says, slipping one foot into her stiletto at the brothel in Karratha, "but I wouldn't want my Mum to know about it."
MORANBAH, 195km west of Mackay, was built to serve the Peak Downs coal mine, which has an enormous FIFO workforce. Peter Finlay is president of the local traders' association and a telecommunications expert, and he knows for a fact that sex workers have toured his town. "I've served one," he says, laughing. "It must have been in the early 1990s. She'd put an ad in the paper but she had an Optus phone and Optus didn't work up here then, so the phone wasn't ringing and she wasn't getting any business, so we switched her over to Telstra and she was so happy she gave me a $20 tip. My wife was standing right next to me, and we like to joke about it: I might be the only person who ever got a tip from a sex worker!"
It was a light-hearted moment, but sex workers have caused trouble in this town for at least one local industry: motel owners. "Karlaa" is based on the Gold Coast but tours Queensland mining towns. She advertises her arrival in the local newspaper - "Fun, Sassy, Full of Energy!" - and texts her "regulars" to let them know when she's due to land. She books a room at whatever local motel is offering a decent rate - a difficult task, given the shortage of accommodation and high prices charged by many establishments. "I'll see six or seven clients before midnight and then it tends to drop away," she says, "but there's usually work in the early morning, after the miners have come off shift, or when executives are on their way to work, and I don't mind that. From my point of view, I'm not in town to be in bed sleeping."
Most of her clients are "in-calls" as opposed to "out-calls" because "when it is miners you are seeing, they live in the camps, four and five to a room, and I can't go there." One of the towns that Karlaa most likes to visit is Moranbah. By her own reckoning she's stayed at every one of its six motels but preferred the Drover's Rest, where she stayed 17 times in two years until June 29, 2010 - when the rug was abruptly pulled from under her business.
According to Karlaa, that day started like any other: she saw a few early morning clients and then "cleaned the room thoroughly. I don't want to give anyone an excuse to throw me out." Shortly before 10am she went to settle her account but, according to documents lodged with the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, she got a frosty reception. "The owner, Joan Hartley, she told me next time I came to Moranbah I'd have to stay somewhere else," Karlaa says. "When I asked her, 'Why's that?' she said, 'We think you're a sex worker' and the way she said it, she was judging me. She gave me the impression that what I do, it's disgusting, it's filth; it was 'we don't want that in our backyard'."
Karlaa says she told Hartley she was being "discriminated against on the basis of lawful sexual activity", to which Hartley responded, "So sue me". So Karlaa did. She lodged a complaint with the tribunal, saying she was "asked unnecessary questions about being a sex worker and that she was overcharged because of her status as a sex worker". But her complaint was dismissed last October on what might be called a technicality: the Drover's Rest motel is licensed to serve alcohol and under the terms of Queensland's Liquor Act the owners aren't allowed to let people run businesses from the rooms. Karlaa has appealed on the grounds that many people use the telephone or the internet for business while staying in a motel room, and that using the bed can't be that different. The appeal is due to be held next month.
Karlaa admits she was surprised when the Hartleys let the matter go all the way to court since she'd already extracted an out-of-court settlement from another motel on the same grounds - discrimination. But she was confident of victory, saying: "To me it was black and white. I had stayed at that motel 17 times in two years when they did not know what I was doing, and as soon as they found out, I was banned. They never knew what I was doing, because I'm discreet. The only reason they figured it out was because on this occasion I had a room right opposite the reception and they saw a man coming and going."
Joan Hartley, who runs the motel with her husband, Evan, did not want to comment for this story but her barrister, the Brisbane-based David Edwards, said the couple had long suspected that Karlaa was a prostitute but weren't sure what to do about it. When she launched the action they decided to fight "because it's an important issue. To be clear: they are not saying 'we do not want sex workers in our motel' but they are saying 'you cannot do sex work on the premises'."
Richard Munro, CEO of the Accommodation Association of Australia, says the industry was delighted when Karlaa's complaint was dismissed at the first hearing and dismayed when she decided to appeal. "There's quite a bit hanging on this," he says. "If the Hartleys win - and we think they should - all motel owners would be allowed to ban sex workers from doing business in their rooms" - which would be likely to put an end to the FIFO sex industry in Queensland. "And if they lose, we think the Queensland government is going to have to change the law because you can't have a situation like we've got now, where they can turn up and demand to be allowed to use a room to run their business."
Karlaa says she's no different from any other worker who turns up to stay at a motel "and uses the phone to make a business call, except in my case, I use the bed". She is determined to fight on, and has collected $4700 from other prostitutes for the ongoing legal battle. "It's wrong, what they are doing. Some people have said to me, 'No, you're wrong, because they can have whoever they want in their motel' but no, if you are offering to provide a service, you are not allowed to discriminate. You can't say, 'I won't have this type of person'."
If the Accommodation Association is watching the case closely, so are sex workers. "As far as I'm concerned, it's an important test case," says Rebecca. "Sex work is completely legal in Queensland and they are trying to use a loophole to make sure we can't do it in motels. They say it's because they don't want us working in the motel but it's not the work, it's the sex that bothers them."
THE people most likely to benefit from changes to laws that make sex touring illegal in WA or more difficult in Queensland are brothel owners, of whom Mary-Anne Kenworthy is perhaps the best known. She's busty and brassy and although she used to be a working girl, she's now the owner of Langtrees brothel in suburban Perth and the most famous madam in all of Western Australia. When asked for her opinion on the Prostitution Bill, she says she's opposed on the grounds of freedom. "Seventy per cent of my girls are touring girls," Kenworthy says, "they don't like to work in their own backyard, and Western Australia is going off. They can make a lot of money, so over they come from the eastern states. But I can't accommodate all of them. And some don't want to do brothel work. They want to work for themselves. Why shouldn't they be allowed? Why should they have to register, giving their own name, their ID? People ask me what I think of politicians meddling in this and I think it should bloody well be illegal for them to vote on something they know nothing about."
Lest anyone think that WA's planned new law will come down only on the workers, Kenworthy sets up an interview with a frequent client of sex workers, Mr L. He's a FIFO miner who regularly sees one "special lady" - they've taken trips together to Bali and even to Sydney for a few days - "but once the law comes in, she'll be illegal, and she could go to jail, and her clients could potentially go to jail. But sex is natural, and they should take the morality out of it. The majority of people don't go to church. Why should we have to live by rules made by churchgoing people?"
Sydney-based "Miss Holly", who is a stripper, a swinger, and a sex worker, agrees, saying: "People get hung up about sex, when there's nothing to get hung up about." She travelled to Karratha late last year to work FIFO from a room at the Port of Call. "They took $30 for the room, which is reasonable, and half of what I made for basic sex, and I was allowed to keep the rest plus whatever extras for 'special services'," she says. "There were all these mining guys ... the rates are high, and you're really busy, basically." Miss Holly doesn't generally keep a record of her clients but she thinks she saw "between five and 10" men on her first night at the brothel "and every time I've gone up there I've made, like, $6000 in a week."
The experience was similar for Angel, the sex worker newly arrived at Karratha. She'd started work at 7pm on that first night at the Port of Call and kept going for nearly 10 hours, and so it went for the rest of the week. It was "really fun, and really busy. It was refreshing being out of the city. The place had a really nice, warm feel, not like the brothels in Sydney." She did not say exactly how much she had made during her seven nights riding the boom - but it was enough for her to say that she'll definitely be back.