Kalgoolrie... why is the brothel closed???

We decided to side-track right from the get go and instead of heading east to the Nullarbor we went North to a mining town called Kalgoorlie, the equivalent of Fort Mac. If you sound it out it kind of sounds like : C a l g a r y. Why in the world did we want to go there? For one we missed the Mac a lot….haha, No. The town has many pubs, filled with miners who come in after their shift, still in their coveralls, for a few hours of drinking and socializing. They even have an electronic display showing the current stock market price for the various ores that they mine. The roads are some of the widest in the world, to accommodate all of the 'roadtrains' that used to make U-turns right in the middle of the street. Top this all off with each bar being served by ‘skimpies’ or women in lingerie, and that the town has a long tradition of legalized prostitution. It has tattoo parlours, brothels, churches and gambling. We said to ourselves, ‘how can we go wrong with this!?!?’ So we headed North, with the 200km side trip to have a taste of a working town. Right away when we pulled in you could tell that this was a rough and ready kind of place; a little worn around the edges with seedy characters almost everywhere.

The sign advertising the ladies of the night available at one of the brothels

We settled into our caravan park on the outskirts of town, where they told us “not to walk around at night, but to make sure to take a taxi after dark, because of the blacks (the aboriginals)”. The owners of the caravan park said that usually they don’t cause any problems but at night they travel in groups, so it’s better just in case to take a taxi. They reassured us that they’ve been living here for a long time and there’s no reason to worry and it’s safe…but take a taxi anyway. We found the story just a little disturbing but more because of the apparently racist opinion than for the apparent danger. After coming home after dark, we didn’t doubt them as much as the streets were filled with like people shuffling drunkenly around the streets in mobs.

Sitting in one of the pubs, just like a shot out of an old western movie

We headed into downtown and saw that the place was nearly deserted. We forgot to take into account that this is January 1, 2010; a national holiday in just about every country around the planet. With it being a work town on top of that, nearly the entire city was somewhere else. Hahaa… whoops. We managed to stop in a couple of bars, chat with a few of the locals and see some of the skimpies before we headed down to the brothel for the famous tour!

Now, again the holiday managed to spoil our plans. The tour was supposed to be at 18:00 according to the guide book and to our caravan park owners, but with the holidays the Madame of the brothel decided to have the tour at 17:00 instead. All of the ladies of the establishment were away on vacation and the only reason for the brothel to be open was for the tour. As we pulled up at 17:50, a group of people leaving the building told us we were too late. Even pleading with puppy dog eyes through the door wouldn’t bring the Madame over to say hello and let us in. A few more stops around the town and we were back at our campsite with take-away Thai. The great thing about Kalgoolrie, is there are no flies and it’s actually warm at night! For the first time in many many days we were able to finally sit on our camping chairs outside of the van and enjoy the evening air! The next day we were set and ready to head back down south and then East across the great Nullabor!

written by

ECRadventure on January 1, 2010 from Kalgoorlie, Australia

from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog

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