Documents menu. When local councillors and other prominent citizens planned appropriate ways to celebrate the Kalgoorlie Centenary, a group of Hay Street sex workers suggested a brothel museum as a fitting tribute to the longstanding contribution of the prostitution industry to the town's economic and social life.
While the city aldermen were not quite ready for such an idea, its conception raises a number of issues about the history of prostitution in Australia. Most obviously, the sex workers were drawing attention to the hypocrisy of the official disapproval of their industry alongside the open toleration, even encouragement, of the Hay Street brothels as a facility for local men and as a tourist attraction for the town.
Equally important is the idea of prostitution as a subject for historical investigation and representation. What kinds of objects and texts could be included in such a museum? The changing physical environment of prostitution is an obvious starting point. One scene might depict the interior of an s hessian tent through which enterprising policemen could poke spyholes in their quest for conclusive evidence of commercial sex , equipped with a wooden box on top of which washbowls contain water costing almost as much as a 'short-time' with the tent's occupant.
Next to the basin, a handful of metal tokens struck with the silhouette of a young woman on one side and a name and address on the other. The only other furniture is an iron bedstead, above which is pinned a medical certificate signed by the local doctor proclaiming the prostitute a young French woman free of venereal diseases. Draped across the end of the bed, a collection of lacy underwear, silk stockings, high-buttoned boots and brightly coloured clothing.
Moving forward in time, the next scene might contain an interior of a weatherboard and iron house, s. Cleanly but basically furnished, it has a basin with cold running water in the corner. Through the door a bathroom, with chip heater, is visible.
