When Madam Carmel was 55, she was a widow in Sydney looking for some way to make a living. Having previously run a chicken farm and boat hire business, her next move was less than conventional.
She bought a historic brothel in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia!
Throughout the 25 years since, the now 80-year-old Madam Carmel has overseen Australia's longest running brothel, Questa Casa. You could say she has seen it all - sex, drugs and even murder.
Opening in the height of Australia's gold rush in 1904 the Pink House, as Carmel affectionately calls it, was an establishment located on Kalgoorlie's infamous Hay Street. The brothel has run for more than 100 years just down the road from a police station, despite laws in Western Australia forbidding its operation.
A new documentary, 'The Pink House', takes a look inside Carmel's empire. After winning Best Australian Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival, the doco is heading to limited screens in November, giving audiences a small taste of the incredible stories that have emerged from behind the Pink House's doors.
"I feel like I'm the caretaker of the Pink House. That's my primary role in life, to make sure that it remains neat and nice. This is the only part of old Kalgoorlie left in Hay Street and I'm very proud of it. We've had triumph and tragedy here, and it's all encompassed."
After her husband passed away, Carmel bought the Pink House after struggling to find work in Sydney where she had lived prior.
"I had worked very hard all my life in various occupations but had no certificates. Of course, once at 55 no one is going to employ you, and that's the state of the world today."
Despite Carmel's affection for the town, the law has been less than kind to her business. Although brothels are illegal in Western Australia, authorities have a long history of turning a blind eye to their operations, instead turning to containment.
"We were all contained to the street," Carmel explained. "The girls could leave the house during the day but all they could do was go on a walk around the block or visit friends in the suburbs. They were not permitted to go where people gathered because if they went where people gathered they'd be soliciting. But when they were on Hay Street there were so many men they never lacked a client."
But there was a change in the wind, with the winding down of the town and the introduction of mobile devices. To combat lacking business, Carmel began running tours of the Pink House.
"When I started I only had one or two people on each tour," she said. "And I only started to do it because it was obvious we needed to supplement income."
The tours have since grown, with curiosities in part due to the Pink House's connection to the gruesome 2014 murder of Kalgoorlie local Beau Davies.