Madame Lash - interview
Who needs rum and sodomy in Sydney when you've got Madame Lash?
Madame Lash has held the whip hand over Sydney's netherworld for three decades. As Sydney's most famous S&M artist, sex hedonist and kink-parlour proprietor, her spank bank is a horny cornucopia of media moguls, eminent politicians, film and TV stars, rock'n'roll animals and eminent yet anonymous fetishists.
But who is this grande dame of the dark arts? How noir is her black book of names? What wonderful terrible things happen at her Palm Beach pleasure palace? And why is she loved, feared, fawned over and lusted for all around this dirty old town?
The truth lies south of her pout and north of her garter. Most of all, in the sub terrain of Sydney itself. "Sydney's the sexiest city on earth," she coos to Time Out. "I should know: I've seen her from every angle. Sydney's all ups and downs, lovely little streets and dirty dark corners. No wonder we wear as little as possible - we love our bodies to be kissed by nature!"
Few have celebrated Sydney's sensuality in as many forms as is humanly, gymnastically and legally possible as Madame Lash. She's been a concubine to millionaires, a model to famous artists and an interpretor of desire for so many it's hard to know where to start. But if you start hard then you're at least off the mark.
Madame Lash was born Gretel Pinniger in the last blasts of WWII. Her parents met on a battle-bound ship to the Middle-East. Annie Laurie was a nurse and Captain Stuart Pinniger was "a dashing, incredibly handsome, amazingly brave" leader of the Anzacs that would storm Tobruk.
According to war diaries now in the possession of Madame Lash's younger brother, Daddy Lash became a Major by virtue of extraordinary acts of valour. Folklore says that despite being shot twice through both knees he still urged his stretcher-bearers to continue advancing on the enemy!
Major Pinniger was thrice nominated for a DSO but never awarded one on grounds of gross insubordination, a rebellious trait his daughter inherited when she was born in Sydney shortly afterward on 15 October 1945.
The future Madame Lash grew up in Strathfield in Sydney's inner west, raised mainly by her grandmother.
Major Pinniger defected to Melbourne and a new bride when Gretel was five and remained cold to his progeny thereafter. His wilful daughter vowed sexual combustion in revenge.
That said, her first crush was a nun and, despite working as an artist's model for the likes of John Olsen from the age of 18 - "many artists have done me over the years... but whether I've modelled for them is quite another matter, darling" - Madame Lash's sexual awakening wasn't until nigh on 19. To say she flowered fast from there would be understating things.
By 20 Pinniger was peeling off her plumage by neon as a Kings Cross stripper. "I became an exotic dancer to free myself from life as an education junkie," she explains. Playing Titania in an East Sydney Tech production of A Midsummer Night's Dream she came to the attention of mogul Clyde Packer, brother of Kerry. "He had a vast array of whippers and spankers," she recalls. "Playing 'Great Temptation', I could choose whatever implement interested me, and then Clyde would reveal what its 'value' was. By the end of the day, I not only had a mink, but a ticket to LA... and spending money."
But some dangerous liaisons are off-limits. Rich lovers, bondage subjects, party partners and orgy masters count among them. Not so Madame Lash's appearance at the 1974 Melbourne Cup. Her customised Birth of Venus trench-coat made Newsweek worldwide and put her S&M parlour on Forbes Street on front pages through the 70s.
Madame Lash cashed in, opening Gamebirds on Oxford Street where she sold whips, chains, corsets, g-strings, leather chaps and studded jackets - garb never seen before on Sydney's streets. Gay men adored her almost as much as Sydney's porn party set.
In 1977, having tied the cast of the first Rocky Horror Show to the rack in her torture chamber, Madame Lash fell in love with Dieter, a man with a "mighty physique" and an impulsive nature. They married within 10 days. A son, Ziggy, was born in 1981.
But black leather softens with time. Madame Lash sold her business in 1986 and, having failed to gain election to the Senate in 1996, hid her love away in Florida House in Palm Beach. "Everyone who comes here wears very little and cares very little," she purrs. This "temple to Isis" features X-rated nooks, trapdoors, peepholes and "chaos rooms". "But my favourite is the 'Anything Can Happen' room."
Today, the Lash mansion houses her greatest obsession. For 16 years she has painted '4D' portraits of her famous friends and "highly vibrational individuals" that enter her sphere. "I seek to attract under my roof the energies of any and all like-minded art and fun-lovers," she says. This long-awaited, unprecedented art awakening will be unleashed on the public at the 2010 Mardi Gras. Until then Madame Lash's chaos theory will reign supreme: "The better you look, the better I look, the better we'll all look."
Lifeline
1945 Gretel Pinniger born in Sydney
1950 Abandoned by her war hero father
1964 Strips for the Kings Cross underworld
1973 Becomes the lover of Clyde Packer
1974 Shocks the world at Melbourne Cup
1977 Opens Sydney's first retail S&M emporium
1981 Son Siegfried born
1994 Enters first 4D artworks in Archibald
1995 Buys Florida House, a five-level pleasure palace in Palm Beach
1996 Runs for the Senate in federal elections
2009 Worshipped as icon at Mardi Gras
