Miss Pearls had just shuttered Madame Brussels. Then a world behind closed doors beckoned
The Kelvin Club’s entrance.Credit: Wayne Taylor
It is difficult to imagine what Baron Kelvin William Thomson, a renowned Scottish physicist, mathematician and engineer for whom Melbourne’s Kelvin Club was named nearly a century ago, would have made of Goldie Hawn-bags.
The cavoodle with the rollicking drag name is a regular at the downstairs bar of today’s Kelvin Club, where her owner Paula Scholes, aka the club’s general manager and secretary Miss Pearls, is overseeing a chablis revolution at one of the city’s oldest and formerly blokiest institutions.
On the day I visit for lunch, Goldie is off cavorting at a farm with a brace of toy poodles owned by club president Sue Baker. While the dog is safely out of earshot, club vice president and former independent MP Fiona Patten admits her underfoot presence isn’t to the liking of all club members.
“There has been a bit of resistance, no doubt,” Patten says between mouth fulls of duck confit, her go-to dish on the revamped dining room menu. “There has also been an acceptance that the life newer members bring to the place has been great. I think some of the older members are struggling with a different space than what they are used to. But the vast majority are loving it.”
To understand what sets the Kelvin apart from Melbourne’s other private clubs, let me introduce you properly to my lunch companions.
Most of you will remember Patten, a former upper house MP who got her start in parliament in 2014 with the Australian Sex Party, formed her own Reason Party and through her work on Victoria’s euthanasia scheme, decriminalisation of sex work and vetting our pandemic laws, earned a reputation as an effective lawmaker and reformer.
She joined the Kelvin Club more than 20 years ago, a few years after the previously men-only club changed its constitution to admit women. At the time, she was working as a political lobbyist for sex workers and needed a quiet space near parliament to think, write emails and meet clients. She also used the club boardroom for her sex industry committee meetings.
Along with Baker and Miss Pearls, Patten is part of an all-women troika challenging traditional notions of how a Melbourne club should look and feel.
Our other lunch companion is Harriet Renn, the 27-year-old general manager of Good One Creative, an advertising agency established by Russel Howcroft’s son, Charlie Howcroft. Renn says she was introduced to the club two years ago by Russel – a long-standing member – when she was looking for an exhibition space to display young contemporary artists.
Miss Pearls, secretary and manager of the Kelvin Club.Credit: Simmon Schluter
Miss Pearls’ immediate enthusiasm for the idea – “of course, run with it, I want to stir up this place!” – convinced Renn that the Kelvin Club was just the “third space” she was looking for to host clients, network and gain a deeper understanding of Melbourne culture and community.
Renn has since become firm friends with Miss Pearls, whose smoke-cured laugh can be heard day and night within the club’s wood-panelled walls. “It’s the Kelvin Club, but it’s Pearls’ place,” Renn says.
The Kelvin brands itself as Melbourne’s most progressive club, but Renn says this descriptor should not be understood as members occupying a shared place on the political spectrum.
“I think it’s an acceptance of authenticity and being able to be yourself and express opinions and having a level of tolerance,” she says. “This is a space for all views. It is not taking one side or the other. That is true progress to me. It is for anyone and everyone if you want to come in and make it yours.” Would-be members just need two existing members willing to vouch for them.
The Kelvin Club began incorporated life as the Fitzroy Bowls Club and changed its name in 1927 when it ditched its green for a Collins Street location. It shifted to its current digs in Melbourne Place in 1946, a Victorian-era warehouse, which in the early years of the ABC housed 3LO’s broadcasting studios.
Due to its connection with Lord Kelvin, the scientist who introduced the world to the concept of absolute zero, the club has always attracted engineers and math savants. During Melbourne’s closeted decades, it also provided a discreet social outlet for gay men. In 1995, the club’s rules were changed to allow women members.
The club is small and inexpensive by Melbourne standards. Annual dues for full members are $875 and the club offers a $480 youth membership to people 35 and under. Since the club reopened after the pandemic, membership has grown from about 300 to 534 members.
The fastest growing part of the club’s member base is young people who either work or live near the city.
Much of this has to do with the club’s decision to bring in Miss Pearls, a hostess whose ribald charm was central to the success of Madame Brussels, a Bourke Street rooftop bar named in honour of Marvellous Melbourne’s most storied brothel. The bar closed during Melbourne’s sixth and final COVID lockdown, just as Baker and her board were looking for a new club secretary.
Miss Pearls and some of her team from Madame Brussels spent the final months of lockdown working in the shuttered Kelvin Club, pulling up old carpets, repainting walls, renovating the decrepit women’s toilet, modernising the drinks list and otherwise making a 19th-century building fit for 21st-century hospitality.
The Kelvin Club
- Address: 14-30 Melbourne Place, Melbourne
- Founded: 1865
- Membership cost: $425 joining fee; full membership $875 annually, affiliate membership $480, young membership for below-35s $480 with joining fee waived; $300 members advance that can be used as credit for bar, dining, and function purchases
- What’s inside: Members bar, members dining room, billiards room, fireside room with open fireplace and leather loungechairs, lounge room, presidents room for private functions, strategy room for meetings or private dining
- Rules: Phones must be on silent, taking a phone call at the bar comes with the cost of a round of port for every member present; smart casual attire in the members bar; business attire in the members dining room; no thongs, shorts, hats or bad hair days
- Open to: Men and women
- How to join: Applicants must be nominated and seconded by current members. Outsiders can apply for membership via interview with the club’s committee and reviewed by management
“It had been powered by a majority of men for a very long time,” she says. “I knew I had to change the culture and it was a pleasure for me to do that.”
Part of the overhaul was shifting away from bar-room boozing and towards cultural events such as the club’s Kelvin Confidential series of speakers. In 2024, the line-up included composer and club member Paul Grabowsky, chef Annie Smithers, journalist Mahmood Fazal and filmmaker Fred Schepisi.
The club remains a work in progress, physically and culturally. There is no lift or disabled access to the first-floor dining room, which makes it off-limits for any government-funded events, and the kitchen is an oversized space equipped with 1970s ovens that were hand-me-downs from the Windsor Hotel.
Miss Pearls is busy redrafting some of the club’s most contentious rules. While the ban on talking on your phone at the bar – punishable by having to buy a glass of port for everyone else at the bar – is likely to stay in force, the dress code will get a nip and tuck.
The dining room’s current requirements are suit or sports coats for men and dresses or pantsuits for women.
Miss Pearls accepts most forms of dress in the bar but draws the line at men in shorts. “I’ll say to go Kmart and buy yourself a pair of dacks.”
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