The Tarraleah Lodge sits on top of a cliff face in Tasmania’s central highlands, looking down the valley towards the Derwent river and, in the distance, the hazy shape of Mount Wellington.
It is the centrepiece of the painstakingly restored 145ha, 35-building art-deco township with an annual turnover of $2m, which was put on the market last month for an asking price of $11m.
But when Leah Potter and partner Jason Willemsen ran the lodge, then called the Tarraleah Chalet, they were lucky to sell two beers a week. It was 2002 and government-owned electricity body Hydro Tasmania was in the process of selling the township for $2m to developers after moving out the last of its regular workforce, most of whom were moved on in the 1990s.
After turning to cutting firewood to make rent, Potter, who had left a career in sex work in Darwin to join Willemsen in the isolated Tasmanian village, dusted off her whips and began offering weekend dominatrix packages.
“We had to think of a way to bring people who would stay, because we had 22 rooms,” she told Guardian Australia.
“I just said to Jason: ‘Listen, I know a way that we can make some money. I am going to ring up my girlfriends and I am going to cater to a niche market.’ ”
It was, briefly, a success. The picturesque setting proved popular with the BDSM community and the lodge was booked out that Christmas by guests seeking a very specific sort of celebration (although not, under the terms of their 20-year lease, any sex). And Leah from Tarraleah’s bondage waitresses and public humiliation cage was front page news in the Hobart Mercury.
But a family tragedy sent the couple to the mainland. When they returned, they had lost the property to developers.
Potter remains an infamous figure in central Tasmania, where her brief reign as “Madam Lash” scandalised the conservative farming community and caused several wives to ban their tradesmen husbands from working in the village.
A property developer, Julian Homer, took over in 2006 and cleaned up the historic worker’s village to appeal to a mainstream luxury market.
A real estate agent, John Blacklow, who told Guardian Australia he had never sold an entire town before, said the three-title village had attracted interest from buyers in Hong Kong and Singapore and could sell for as much as $13m.
Built in the 1930s by workers on the hydro electric scheme, the village supported up to 2,000 people in the 1950s before whittling down as Hydro Tasmania mechanised its operations, reducing the need for a local workforce. Just 15 of the original workers’ cottages remain, all restored with original fittings by Homer, as well as the town hall, church, cricket pavilion and, of course, the lodge. There’s also a separately owned golf course, trout fishing lake, caravan park, and a herd of ginger-mopped highland cattle.
Ross Warren’s father was one of the Hydro Tasmania workers who helped build the village. They lived in Tarraleah until 1968, when Warren was 17, making the monthly trek down a windy gravel road to Hobart, 126km away, for supplies.
He returned to Tarraleah along the now-sealed road for Hydro Tasmania’s centenary celebrations in 2014 and said the village, although much smaller than it once was, was an important part of the state’s history.
“I hope they keep it going the way it’s been going because otherwise it will just disappear back into the bush,” he said.
Labor MP Craig Farrell, whose legislative council seat of Derwent includes the Hydro construction towns of Waddamana and Wayatinah as well as Tarraleah, said the village’s colourful recent history had tempered local curiosity about the sale.
“We sort of peaked early, I think,” he said. “Unless there’s another Leah I can’t see it making a lot of difference.”
