One of Australia's most famous brothel madams has announced she has put her former bordello on the market, and is using the occasion to relive her glory days working on Kalgoorlie's historic red-light district.

Key points: The brothel, known as Club 181 and Langtrees Kalgoorlie, operated until 2012

The brothel, known as Club 181 and Langtrees Kalgoorlie, operated until 2012 Madam Mary-Anne Kenworthy has owned the Hay Street brothel for 31 years

Madam Mary-Anne Kenworthy has owned the Hay Street brothel for 31 years The neighbouring Questa Casa claims to be Australia's oldest working bordello

Now a tapas restaurant, the 16-bedroom hotel on Hay Street operated as Club 181 and Langtrees Kalgoorlie before closing as a working bordello seven years ago.

Madam Mary-Anne Kenworthy, who operates brothels in Perth, Canberra and Darwin, bought the Kalgoorlie bordello in 1988 for $185,000.

A formal valuation of the property will be conducted next week, but early estimates suggest the asking price could be up to $1.5 million.

"I have a lot of history here … but it's time," Ms Kenworthy said.

"I'm not getting any younger … I'm 63 and I have got to be winding down my responsibilities."

Sex workers in Kalgoorlie's red-light district in 1988. ( Supplied: National Library of Australia/Robin Smith )

Sale follows Red House brothel closure

Ms Kenworthy demolished the famous corrugated-iron structure, known colloquially as the "starting stalls", and spent $2.3 million converting it into a working bordello and museum which opened in 2000.

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She expects to take a financial hit on the sale but said the Kalgoorlie brothel had turned a significant profit in its early years.

"You've got to be realistic — prices are what they are and things change," she said.

"In business you've got to be adaptable to change, or you die.

"Our business in Hay Street has died, but the whole town has changed — it's more of a family town.

"You don't have the proportion of single men to the lack of females, like that you had in the 1960s and 80s."

The sale comes just weeks after the closure of the neighbouring Red House as a working brothel, which means Kalgoorlie's red-light district is down to its last bordello, the 115-year-old Questa Casa run by "Madam Carmel".

Pregnant mother who bought a brothel

Ms Kenworthy was running an escort agency in Perth when she came to Kalgoorlie for the first time in 1985.

She was heavily pregnant and a single mother of three when she bought the Kalgoorlie brothel three years later from "Madam Trudy".

Men were prohibited from any involvement in the sex trade in those days, and Ms Kenworthy said police "begrudgingly" allowed the sale to proceed.

The purchase went ahead on the condition that she was not allowed to look inside.

If she did, she may have had seconds thoughts, as the old tin shed was a fire hazard and grass was growing on the floor in some of the rooms when Ms Kenworthy moved in.

Sex workers outside Kalgoorlie's Club 181 brothel in 1990. ( Supplied: National Library of Australia/Trish Ainslie and Roger Garwood )

The evergreen entrepreneur still remembers the prices in 1988 were $150 an hour and $90 for half an hour.

"I was dearer than anybody else," she said.

"I always liked to be that little bit higher price, so I'd buy better quality beds and make sure it's very clean."

The approval process to rebuild on the site took five years and marked one of the biggest changes on Hay Street in a century.

"I'd made a lot of money out of Kalgoorlie and I wanted to leave something better behind," she said.

"Kalgoorlie was doing marvellously until 1999, but the year I started rebuilding, fly-in, fly-out mining came in and the residential brothels set up in town and we just couldn't compete.

"There was enough work in town for about 20 to 30 working girls, and there ended up being about 60 to 70 girls and nobody was making money."

Mary-Anne Kenworthy after her Kalgoorlie brothel reopened in 2000. ( Supplied: Mary-Anne Kenworthy )

Could site reopen as a brothel?

The Scarlet Mile was the name given to Kalgoorlie's Hay Street — a play-on-words associated with the mining city's famous Golden Mile, which was once considered the richest square mile on Earth.

The sight of scantily-clad sex workers standing in the doorways of the brothels and waving to passers-by became a unique tourist attraction in Kalgoorlie.

But Ms Kenworthy initially thought it was hurting business.

"I wanted to do things differently and so I wanted people to ring my bell and come and meet my girls inside," she said.

"I remember the police coming down [on] the third or fourth night telling me that I couldn't take the girls off the street, because I was taking away a tourist attraction."

Ms Kenworthy said there were four operating brothels when she arrived in the 1980s, after one had burnt down.

From conversations she has had with several former madams over the years, she believes there was 17 brothels on Hay Street at its peak, when gold nuggets would commonly be traded for sex.

She said her property's days as a working bordello are most likely over, adding she believed a mining company looking for workers' accommodation would be a logical buyer.

"Nobody can say what will happen … if somebody buys it, they probably still have the right to operate it as a bordello," she said.

"But I think there's probably more money in a restaurant and guest house than a bordello."

Tourists flocked to see brothel

When the sex industry slowed down, Ms Kenworthy said busloads of tourists kept the brothel's doors open and perpetuated the city's Wild West image.

She said more than 140,000 tourists had visited the brothel, including famous celebrities she would ask to autograph the walls, with late V8 Supercars champion Peter Brock and comedian Kevin "Bloody" Wilson among them.

"I used to get three or four emails every week thanking me from couples that hadn't had sex for 10 years or more," she said.

"By doing our tour they got a sex life back again … I got them talking."

Brothel madam Mary-Anne Kenworthy has been a colourful character of Kalgoorlie's red-light district. ( ABC News: Jarrod Lucas )

Most of the memorabilia from her Kalgoorlie museum — often described as Australia's answer to Amsterdam's Sex Museum — has been relocated to her Darwin brothel.

One of the last remaining artefacts is a century-old piano which Ms Kenworthy said was carted by camels into the remote northern Goldfields during the gold rush.

She wants to gift the piano to a museum, along with a framed letter from Queen Elizabeth.

"I would like to leave it in the Goldfields with an organisation which would treasure it for what it is," she said.

"We couldn't save the old ivory keys when it was completely rebuilt 20 years ago — it was too far gone.

"It's got a beautiful tone and pitch, but pianos need to be played."

'Fun and games' of owning a brothel

Leigh Varis-Beswick with brothel owner Mary-Anne Kenworthy. ( ABC News: Emma Wynne )

Ms Kenworthy said life as a Kalgoorlie brothel madam was never dull, including raids by police and working alongside Leigh Varis-Beswick.

Until 1986, Leigh was a man named Harry who took over as madam after Ms Kenworthy moved to Perth.

"I don't think I would be the person I am today without the experience in Kalgoorlie," she said.

Ms Kenworthy said she became friends with many of the sex workers, including author Taylor Tara, who has written books lifting the lid on the industry.

Sex worker Taylor Tara has written books about the Kalgoorlie sex trade. ( ABC Goldfields-Esperance: Nathan Morris )

She said operating in a small city also had its challenges.

"I had a wife out the front desk here one night because she saw her husband's car parked out the back," she said.

"Leigh kept her happy at the desk, while I got his mate to come out and pretend he had borrowed the husband's car.

"We have had some fun and games.

"It was never boring — that's why I look so youthful at 63."

Police 'closed' brothel for a week

Technically illegal, the Kalgoorlie sex trade was restricted to Hay Street until 2000 when the so-called containment policy — an unofficial law enforced by the government and police — was lifted.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 1 minute 35 seconds 1 m 35 s A November 2002 ABC news report shows a police raid on another of Ms Kenworthy's brothels, Langtrees Perth

Ms Kenworthy said the relationship between police and the brothels was strained at times.

"I got closed down for a week by the police for doing an escort once, and I thought 'bugger them I'm not closing my doors'," she said.

"I decided to renovate, and I had all the lights on and all the doors open … I got all the tradesmen in and we redecorated the place.

"The police were going up and down the street every half an hour checking on us.

"Every bloke that came near the place I dragged them in and gave them a beer, and a little talk that we couldn't open for another week.

"Press came knocking saying 'we've heard you've been closed down' and I said, 'no I'm renovating' … you can't have guests while you've got plumbing and carpet everywhere.

"After that, I put the prices up and got all my money back in three weeks."

What is the future of sex industry?

More sex workers are working privately outside of brothels. ( ABC News )

Ms Kenworthy said the world's oldest profession will continue to thrive in Australia, but she said the business landscape has changed forever.

Social media has added an extra dimension to the traditional brothel, where regular health checks for sex workers was mandatory.

She has tried to move with the times and recently joined Twitter, clocking up more than 4,000 followers.

But admits her business model, at least in Kalgoorlie, is dead.

"I think the number of brothels will decline," she said.

"A lot of the girls are operating privately now, so I think they will decline a little bit more over the next 10 or 20 years, but a balance will come out.

"When I came into the sex industry in 1983 about 5 per cent of the girls were private and the rest worked in bordellos.

"Nowadays it would probably be 55 per cent of the girls are private and 45 per cent are working in the bordellos, and I think that will drop off a little bit more for the bordellos.

"All businesses change, and technology has changed our business, especially the mobile telephone."