The day madam Stormy Summers took me inside her brothel, sorry boudoir

Almost 30 years ago, legendary Adelaide madam Stormy Summers took a naive young journo into her penthouse for a tour.

• GALLERY: Stormy’s life in pictures
• TRIBUTE: Life of a red light legend

Legendary Adelaide madam Stormy Summers once escorted a naive young man on a personal tour of her “boudoir” and third-floor penthouse apartment overlooking Light Square.

Almost 30 years ago, the assertive and empowered Stormy revelled in the early twenty-something man’s surprise at the changerooms in the Waymouth St escort agency.

They were just like footy changerooms – individual lockers and wooden slat benches – but much, much cleaner.

Clearly enjoying her corruption of the young man, Stormy jocularly offered him a freebie with one of her “girls”. He politely declined, blushing.

The young man was me. I always believed her freebie offer was a joke, designed to embarrass me and play upon my relative innocence.

I’d got to know Stormy through working at the City Messenger and The Advertiser, revelling in her fearless challenging of authorities in the timid political climate of the time.

A long time ago, I don’t exactly remember when, Stormy summoned me to her escort agency. She preferred to call it a boudoir. Anyone who called it a brothel was roundly castigated – it seemed there was a legal loophole she exploited that meant Stormy outlawed this descriptor.

SA madam Stormy Summers in her boudoir in 1997. Picture: Darren Seiler.

Naturally, the boudoir was highly secure. A man monitored a bank of closed circuit TV screens, showing the interior and exterior – out onto Waymouth St and Light Square.

He gruffly questioned me, then accepted my explanation that I was there to see Stormy. I was ushered into a mirrored lift, which took me to her penthouse.

Subsequent articles document a roof garden, swimming pool and growling doberman cross. My enduring memory is of Stormy’s fascination with Native American artworks, which were hung across the cavernous walls of the living area.

Light flooded in through north-facing glass walls, suitably opaque so as not to allow external viewing. A bearskin rug sprawled over the floor.

Either on this tour or at a subsequent visit, Stormy was responding to a review of prostitution laws ordered by the-then police commissioner, Mal Hyde, who believed the system was outdated.

Ever one to deliver a cutting quote, The Advertiser archive records Stormy as telling me in late 1997: “If the laws stay like they are and police raid establishments, it drives more girls to the streets.”

As others have documented, Stormy was ruthlessly and fastidiously into cleanliness and empowerment of her “girls”.

We moved on from her penthouse to the boudoir, which she proudly displayed as a gleaming example of triumphant success against innumerable forces arrayed against her – notably politicians and police.

Stormy Summers at her bar in her Waymouth St boudoir in 2006. Picture: Mark Brake

The numerous bedrooms were lined up like office cubicles, but larger and more discreet. A picture from one of my visits shows Stormy looking defiantly at the camera, standing at a bedroom door.

A sex worker in a tight, skimpy, silver sequined dress is sitting on the four-poster bed, dimly lit by art deco lamps on either side. Innumerable towels are sprinkled throughout the room, as they were in seemingly every part of the boudoir.

As the tour drew to a close, the incessant lecturing about the naming of the brothel – sorry, boudoir, kept going and going. She rang me later that day to remind me.

Unfortunately, the picture caption on a late 1997 story contained the forbidden word. I still remember an angry Stormy calling to hector me. It was a bollocking far worse than any politician has subsequently attempted to unleash.

Whatever might be said about Stormy after her passing, she was a character who was true to her convictions, for which she fought determinedly and passionately.

Originally published as The day madam Stormy Summers took me inside her brothel, sorry boudoir