 Today I'm interviewing Jackie Ultra. Okay, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I'm happy either way. Okay, okay. Let's start right at the very beginning. Tell us a little bit about your early years. I understand your childhood was a bit troubled. I guess, yeah. I don't think you know much about your childhood while it's happening. I think you only learn about your childhood in retrospect when you start meeting other people and go, oh, like, wow, that wasn't so normal. So I don't speak to either of my parents anymore. My mother used to beat me with bamboo, the feather duster, the wooden spoons, and then get even more angry when they broke. So I had a pretty early education in caning. The bamboo was green and it used to split on your arse, which actually hurt more than a cane. My father beat me with a buckle end of the belt. So I had a kind of, I guess, I had a lot of people trying to break my spirit when I was a kid. And I had this, because I had a sister who was born and stopped breathing, so she got a disability. And I think when you have two children, there's usually one that's the good one and one that's the bad one. I was the bad one. And my sister was painted white. Everything that she did was good. So I grew up thinking that I must be a bad person and that I obviously needed eventually to leave my suburban life and find other bad people who I thought would be painted black like me. But you said even though these objects would break, you were the child who wouldn't break. What did that mean? Oh yeah, I'd say it didn't hurt even if I was crying. I'd say it didn't hurt, didn't hurt, didn't hurt. And my mother would, who later as an adult, must admit it that I always got 10 more hits than I actually deserved because I wouldn't give. I just don't think I knew how to give in. I just, I fought, like that was my nature. And I think that she wanted a really ordinary, acquiescent child and just wasn't that. And my father, I don't know, I don't recall much parenting from him at all. So he'd occasionally come in as the authority figure and of course I wouldn't give in there either. But I didn't know, this was stuff that you didn't talk about. You didn't talk about it at school. You certainly didn't talk about it with friends. So you didn't know that other kids weren't getting hammered. And it's only when you look back and, you know, try and make sense of your childhood, you kind of go, oh, that isn't what's supposed to happen. But I think that Australia certainly had a culture of spare the rod and spoil the child through that period. And my mother feels very vindicated in how she parented. Did other people aware of what was going on in your household, or did they ignore it? I genuinely don't think so. As an adult, I have approached both other family members, so aunts and uncles, and they didn't seem to know and I certainly didn't ask for help. I think maybe they thought that if I'd needed help, I would have asked for it. But again, I just didn't know how to. I just went, well, you just have to deal like you get up. You know, you fight. That was my answer, I suppose. So I guess now they know, but I guess they have a different relationship with me now. The aunts and uncles, you mean? Yeah, absolutely. I probably have a better relationship with my cousins because I don't feel like they're all tarred with the same brush. If you know what I mean, like the cousins are kind of, they grew up with those parents. It was the parents that didn't help. So yeah, I mean, I certainly have talked about it. And they certainly knew that stuff at home wasn't great, but nobody said it to me. So I think I formed all of the analysis about my childhood independently. And I didn't know, I didn't know any different. And then it's really hard to shape your origin stories. Sure. So if you think you're painted black, you go through life going, I'm a bad person. Like you, but I mean, I guess I turned it into a positive, but I think that that was a real, it's a really fundamental story to me. But as a child, on a slightly lighter note, as a child, you dreamt about being a cult leader. I did. I was really attracted to dark figures, you know? I mean, Hellfire is a cult if nothing else. Like, I mean, it has its rules and it has its costumes. And I mean, those were the kind of people, powerful people, people that set what, set how the world would be. Because one of the things I think cult leaders do quite well is they create an alternative set of values. And I think that that is exactly what I wanted to do with Hellfire. I wanted to make a place where nobody was what the club was about, so everybody fit it in. I wanted to make a place where you could be fat. I wanted to make a place where you could be ugly. And you would find your people. Like those were, those were really strong values for me. And I think I only saw cult leaders as the kind of people that would get persecuted for trying to tell a whole bunch of people, here's a different way that you can live and here are different values and you can have them. Is there one that really stood out to you? Well, I mean, it's really hard to get through Jonestown and the Maldring in the Great Krolade, but, you know, I think that you can be a benevolent cult leader. Oh, okay. Like, I don't think you have to. I don't actually think that cult leaders set out to hurt their people. The outside pressure on their communities is what causes the meltdown. I mean, you can think about, you know, many of the big meltdowns, like they're all about outside pressure saying, no, no, you're too weird. You can't live like that. Wow. The concept of a benevolent cult leader actually really didn't occur to me. I think that they loved them at the beginning. Yeah. But I also think living differently to everyone else is really tough. It's tough on the psyche. When you put your photos up on Facebook, for example, and people mock you or laugh at you because you don't look like everybody else. One of the reasons we chose to put Hellfire photos publicly was to try to break down this stigma so people didn't get that when they put up their photos in their outfits. We could have had a private website and we did for many years, but when we thought, no, then we're just letting you all live it alone. Like, when your friends go, oh, I would never do that. It's like, well, actually it's normal. You mentioned your people painted black. Yeah. How did you find them? Well, I think I was 18, no, I think I was either 18 or 19 and I went, I must find my people. And I thought that they might be bikers or they might be people that went to the Hellfire Club and Hellfire had started in Sydney in March of 1993. And so I rocked up in blue jeans and a leather vest and got on the A-frame the first night with the man I later married and also the first man I ever slept with. I slept with women up solely up until that point. But I just didn't, I just went, and I didn't even think not to do any of it. I was like, oh, okay, well, my people must be here. And it was kind of funny because I thought that the people painted black would be really terrible people. But what I found was people who asked before they hit you, people that would stop when you wanted them to stop and that people who had a really strong ethical code. So you actually could trust them and give in and let them hurt you because you know that they wouldn't hurt you. And that was actually really substantially different to my family. How did you even know about Hellfire though? I think it had a big splash when it opened here. It was a guy from Melbourne who had fairly questionable politics brought it up and he lasted for about a year. But luckily I didn't meet him. I met Master Tom, who I eventually married, but he's a real left-wing. So he was all about body positivity. He was all about left-wing politics. He was like no nuts or uniforms here, kind of. So I think that set the time for what I thought Fetish was. But I was certainly interested. And I think if I think back, a lot of my sexual fantasies up until that point had perhaps been quite divergent. I do recall having to hop down the hallway, naked, tied in the curtain cords for a knife from the kitchen as quite a teenager and having to explain to my mother how her curtain cords got cut. So I think that I had fantasies about being tied up and I had fantasies about... I mean even the cult leader stuff, I think it all came from movies. So I think I had a fairly active fantasy life that wasn't about vanilla sex. Okay. But tell us about your initial experiences with BDSM because you told me that that taught you something amazing about yourself. What was that? I think initially with BDSM I found that owning pain is different from unwanted pain. That was perhaps the biggest lesson. That if you want to be hit, it is so good compared to if somebody hits you or if you have an accident and hurt yourself. So wanted pain was erotic. That was perhaps the best thing I learned. I also learned to hit people. That took me a lot. It was hard. I couldn't believe at the beginning that somebody wanted to be hurt because I didn't want to be hurt or I only wanted to be hurt because bad things had happened to me perhaps. So I took me a long time to pick up the whip and then when I did I realized that I was kind of being a bit of an asshole with it. I didn't like... I didn't have any limits. Like I knew the rules. I was supposed to tell me when you'd had enough and if you weren't telling me I'm not going to stop. I don't know. I was arrogant. I was young and arrogant. So there was a particular man and he really liked me and he wanted to impress me and so he would do that doesn't hurt and I'd be like, I know this is hurting and eventually I saw myself and went if I just keep hitting somebody because they're too stupid or too proud or trying too hard to say... to use a safe word I am just as violent as the people in my past. So then I think I learnt that you only hit somebody because you love them and that you need to create that boundary of love before you pick up a whip. So are you saying then that it should be something much more intimate between people and not just random... I'm just saying if I'm going to hurt you I need to love you. I need to love you as a human and I need you to have the best life. And if I can't get that with you I shouldn't hit you. It doesn't have to be intimate romantic love but I just have to care what happens to you. I have to care when you don't care because it's me hurting you. I'm the one with the weapon and you're tied down. So I think I guess I learnt very clearly what the difference between violence and BDSM and I've never forgotten it. I don't hurt people to cause pain. Do you think that there's a misunderstanding about that in a lot of the BDSM community? Look I think one of the things I do is book a lot of shows and I often book shows from the community and I feel like sometimes people think they have to get more and more extreme to be re-booked. I try very hard to talk to people about we want to see intimacy and we want to see how you play and if you play with I've done a lot of stupid shows where I dip my lips in fluorescent paint and I whip people and then I make them sit on paintings and I do craft shows and they can be as good and as fun as a show where someone is putting in fleshworks. So I think that we try to show those values. I don't think BDSM has to be a competition to do the most extreme things to your body and sometimes those are not the shows I enjoy the most. Well tell us about the Sydney kink scene when you first encountered what was it like? Well first of all there was Hellfire there was warehouse parties I remember a very early warehouse party where two people were wearing lace underwear and they were dancing over a white canvas and they had potato whip up their arse in different colours and they were pooping through the panties to create art in high heels so that was that was my welcome to Hellfire. That was my welcome to warehouse parties my first inquisition I saw I was dancing I had indulged in some entertainments and I saw a double-handed fisting in the middle of the dance floor and I remember looking in and going oh that's so interesting but I think I might look at that another time I I guess I saw it on and then the third memory is was it a party called Threshold which actually is a little bit older than Hellfire and I saw somebody have a champagne anima and that was quite extreme too shit and champagne everywhere so yes I saw a lot of things and I you know I guess you find out where you sit that you know you find out what your fetishes are but I've always enjoyed watching people do what makes them happy within reason in the license premises tell us how your personal BDSM journey evolved in the community I think I grew up really quickly as a kid so I didn't have a great sense of play so for me BDSM has always been about playfulness somebody says you can't set somebody on fire I work out how you can I go to Bunnings so Bunnings is a great source of inspiration and I go and find things that will glow under black light and I make them into bondage for the international audience Bunnings is a massive hardware store a lot of Hellfire shows developed in Bunnings paint food if I think of an idea I'll execute it so my subs used to learn to bring a towel to Hellfire one of them for her birthday I set up a row of balloons on a string and in each balloon was a different vial substance and she had to go and sit under a particular balloon and if she picked the wrong order it was maple syrup before flour so she'd pop the balloon she'd get the cane strokes and then she'd move to the next balloon so I've always found BDSM is creative and fun I do like hurting people and I do like being hurt so I do like pain but I also like things that are beautiful I like piercing so I've pierced feathered wings onto people that glow under black light I like slime I made a show where I use a blade to cut veins full of lime green slime I've done a lot of foot fetish shows where I've used jelly snakes as bondage I made somebody bake a cake with their feet that was awesome I did it like one of those cooking shows where I was like here's a cake we prepared earlier now she's going to ice it so I guess for me BDSM is not so straight up and down it's not as serious as it may be but of course I can flog, I can pierce I can use fire electric play none of the manuals though do tell you the thing I found about electric play nobody talks about having a tongue piercing so that you go and get your violet wand and you stick the contact pad on and you're licking and you're licking and a spark arcs off your piercing and gives you a massive blister on your tongue go figure how did you learn a lot of this experimentation do you know why it's really hard to break somebody or end up in hospital so just go for it my gosh you try and mostly my rule is you try it on yourself first so the violet wand derives and you sit there in your house going what does this feel like and what does this feel like oh okay I won't do that one but did you see these things depicted somewhere that you even I read a lot of books I read everything that was to read about BDSM but then I guess also I don't know I just experimented it's about playing with bodies at the end isn't it so I do remember an early partner I said what would happen if you put a piercing needle into one of the veins on your penis and he said try it blood spurted everywhere but it was good to know it's good to know like honestly it's actually pretty hard to break somebody you know you have to really set out to hurt them so you go to the supermarket and you buy 15 types of hair moose you smear somebody with honey and you see which one burns so you know like it's about playfulness and I think sometimes we forget about the play aspect of it in all of these rules what we're doing is having fun like we're meant to have fun we're meant to experiment incredible but you put yourself through university I did utilizing BDSM well first of all I was being a pro dom so I was being paid to hit people I was also being paid to do shows at Hellfire and I wrote on BDSM for my honest thesis let's come back let's come to that in a little bit because that is a very fascinating piece and I want to give it a proper time but is this paid enough that you were able to do all your courses well you know I was also in receipt of a government a government payment for being unable to live with my parents eventually I got my parents to sign something to say my house was violent and I couldn't live there so I got a living away from home allowance which basically paid for the rent and nothing more living in Sydney, Sydney is one of the most expensive places to live in terms of cost of living so I would do sessions I would do shows there was a magazine called Paddles and I would go on dates with men and they'd you know it would be like straight white men they're going oh I want to spank your body body over dinner and I'd be like yeah right can you hand me your underwear yeah okay but I mean those are the things that I guess you know again in terms of looking for people painted black sex work dominatrix I looked everywhere I wanted to see who the people were that society tells us a bad people and I have to say I liked them all so was there anyone in all of this work that completely repulsed you that you found awful from time to time in every scene or community you meet people that you don't get along with or that you don't find ethical I'm really bad on bullying I don't like people that bully I don't like people that hurt people who have less power than them so those kind of people get my back up I also I think that there's a tendency sometimes for some mediocre men to be attracted to the idea of being a master because they can't succeed as men so that they think that if they put on a master hat that's suddenly going to give them some sort of rights and authority and they've often caught my eye because I just don't I don't think that that's an example dominance is not something that you put on with a hat right and also I guess one of the things I've always done in terms of educating young people that come to Hellfire is to go you don't have to choose what you are just because somebody tells you you're a sub that doesn't mean that that's what you are you've got choices here if this is not fun stop it there was one that really I had a sub bring me I think we're out of town we're driving up the highway and she's like my master's going to get my pussy pierced six times and I don't want all the metal on my pussy and I was like well then say no it's not a requirement and BDSN needs to be negotiated and just because you have this fun sex game going on doesn't mean at times you don't have to step outside it and be an adult and actually say actually I need to talk to you in a normal voice now not as my master and this is not fun for me and I'm not finding it fun and we need to set some limits and boundaries yeah yeah but you said you've whipped half of Sydney I have whipped half of Sydney so tell us a bit about that there was a club where there was a very small portion of community and we did shows for a wide audience one night we hit 1600 people that was the biggest I had to whip like this because I couldn't move my arms because the people were in so close so I've whipped the local constabulary yeah somebody tapped me on the shoulder and went do you know that you're assaulting a police officer and I'm like oh but yeah so we used to take audience volunteers we've been through licensing court a few times because apparently if somebody plays to get into a venue and then I whip them I'm performing a sex act on them so I'm soliciting on licensed premises so we've had a lot of our shows filmed by chess cameras so eventually we ran a system where the person would tell me the months before or the week before at that point were weekly tell me the week before that they wanted to be whipped so I'd put them on the door list so that they weren't paying I didn't solicit but yeah we ran each night I would whip 8 to 10 to 15 people we'd have three tops working and we'd just go through them so it'd be walking up to people in the audience and going hi would you like to get whipped tonight or they'd come to you and they'd only rape them and it's like well have you seen anyone else get anal sex we charge a lot more for that on you go apparently that straight man's biggest fear that somebody's going to touch their freckle and like we tie you up with your pants on they're going to stay on it's going to be okay so yeah so in that time period I whipped a lot of people but the police officer clearly was enjoying this yes the police officer was enjoying it they used to use Hellfire as their off night like when they'd come and and they would actually be really difficult like they would be really inappropriate in the venue they were really hard work well like you know they'd grab subs and you know get a punch in the face from one of our subs we had to hold our ground there because it was you know whipping for the general public I whipped Pantera the band they were so off their heads that they were shaking the A-frame and I picked up the nastiest whip I had and I'm like these are your kidneys right I'm going to hit you there and let's just stop like yeah we whipped all sorts of people we whipped Madonna Madonna came out she actually doesn't like BDSM she was like oh don't hurt her because our subs all wanted to go really hard because it was for Madonna we whipped Robert DeCastella who is a marathon runner we taught Richard Roxbury to whip for his movie Passion where he was playing somebody that used to do BDSM yeah we've done a lot of whipping my gosh but you also worked at a porn magazine tell us a little about that yeah I did 13 years as the editor of Wet Set which was a pissing a pissing and adult baby magazine which was what I used while I was going through uni because I didn't want to be a waitress so I've edited a lot more pee than any person has ever has a right to and I've done a lot of public shoots in really inappropriate places like the Sydney Opera House Milsen's Point Station of women peeing their pants up the escalators in Broadway shopping centre you name it we've done it it just felt like an extension on Hellfire really oh my gosh but you've told me that Hellfire is a club where no one fits in so everyone fits in what do you mean well I mean that we don't pitch at the body beautiful the tom of Finland we don't say what you have to be and we try to do this in a whole variety of ways we choose the poster from the people that come the month before so it's a real person that comes and at the beginning we meddled and we would choose like normally you pick the best photo and a normal club marketing would pick the photo that's going to get the most people in we've never done that we've picked people because we wanted to make older women feel like it was a place for them for women fat women so at the beginning we would meddle and we'd go we had a fat blonde last time we're going to have a skinny red head with tattoos this time and so we would kind of make sure that we got balanced that way now we just picked the best photo because what we learnt was that when you meddle and when you give people alternative images of beauty all people start to feel beautiful in your club so they learn confidence because actually what sells a poster is somebody feeling very confident so what we found and then I realised that we had to stop meddling where it was one night and there was this girl and she just looked absolutely beautiful she'd probably been about a size 6 which is really kind of petite in Australian sizes and she came up to me and she was standing there by herself and I said oh you look really beautiful in your corset and she said oh I know I don't fill it out like I should and I felt absolutely horrified I was like if we've made you feel like you're not wearing a corset properly we've gone too far and we need to take the meddling out because all women can look beautiful in a corset yeah so yeah so at first it was meddling now it's not we also threw our amazing sponsors a sex fetish sorry we've run a DIY prize for the last I think 8 years so every month we give a gift voucher of $100 for a leather shop to somebody who makes their own outfit and by letting crack craft as I call it letting crack craft win we've actually I think I guess people have seen because we do a photo before so we show the winner we show the prize and then we show who won so A so people see that we do give it to different people it's not just a cliquey thing but be so people get inspired and feel good if they have wrapped themselves in guide wrap or if they've made their own outfit their own tin foil hat so I think in those kind of ways we really resist being about who has the most money and who has the prettiest looks you've also said that Hellfire is very good about welcoming new people oh yeah the newcomers look I'm not trying to be mean but older fetish crowds can be really difficult if they don't like something that's all you hear about whereas the newcomers it's all new and it's all exciting and they've never fitted in before and they're so happy to be there and they didn't know that they could dress like that or so I mean they're actually my favourites but we used to allow them when they signed up for a mailing list we used to get we'd give them a box where they could tell us something if they wanted to tell us and they all was like I've never found a club where I've fitted in before and it was such a repeated piece of text that we kind of laughed because they can't all be the ones that we're putting the club on for so that's how we came up with the line the club where nobody fits in so everybody does you also said that pansexual attendants greatly benefits Hellfire how was that well I think it forced everyone to get along we've had an evolving set of rules for quite some time I've been the person writing them so I can tell you that we struggled a lot more we had a lot of lesbians come at one stage and the straight men's behaviour was difficult so at that point the rules said treat every woman as if she is a lesbian because she probably is and I just wanted them to have that hesitancy rather than going hey how about it we gave a lot of rules that are about how to have a conversation with somebody that's not I want to suck your cock like you need to be able to have tools to talk to people so that's one of the reasons we've always sat on a dress code it hasn't had to be leather but it's like if somebody is dressed up as a French maid you can go up to them and say hello you look like a lovely maid and that's a conversation starter as opposed to a come on and I think by giving people those tools we encourage conversation and then sex happens but it's like you get a friendly club you get a club where people ask your fetish before they ask you to do their fetish fascinating but you've also said it Hellfire is like the McDonald's what do you mean by that meet and beat we don't stand on too much ceremony there aren't too many rules we're open to people experimenting we like people coming and seeing if it's for them if they want more we are a good funnel to all of the other events we don't I actually think that if they're going to have a journey through BDSM they are going to go to other events so we've always been happy being the first point of contact so I guess I have a wide catchment so I think BDSM is very wide but if they want really specific things we then funnel them off to other parties and often the party promoters like we've had really good relationships with most of the party promoters and so they come so I go well let me introduce you to this person and maybe you can talk to them about their private party because obviously you want more than we can give you how do new trends and influences affect Hellfire look you get you get enthusiastic uptake at different times I think we've had conservative governments being really helpful because the more conservative society is the more people feel like they want to rebel so I think we do better under a liberal government than we do under a labor government except for the lock out laws which have impacted everybody pretty heavily I think maybe maybe Master Sir kind of stuff came out as a response to HIV but I think now as a response to the sort of the alien nation that people feel in society we see the puppy pack really having developed so I think that we certainly see trends overall latex was very strong for a while we had a very big rope community for a while I decided to miss people actually being hit for a while because it was so much rope but unfortunately Hellfire is shutting down what's going on with that look our current venue has gotten a bit big and they want a lot more money and a small community event can't we just can't guarantee that the bar will make what they want us to make and we've moved four times five times in the last two years and each time it's terrible like half the community hates the new venue half the community loves the old venue and will never come and this isn't the right place to do BDSM I don't feel comfortable wearing my fetish clothes in Darling Harbour it's a family place and it's like there's less and less places that we could possibly hold an event of our size and also we have to break a new venue into BDSM every single time so that means talking to security until they don't feel uncomfortable it means making sure making sure everything we try to tell them that we're going to need a big coat check I mean a big coat check lots of people wear very little clothing in the venue they're going to need a coat check and every time the first coat check is an absolute clusterfuck it's just terrible and there's nothing you can do you can warn a venue every time changing is hard and we've been doing this for 26 years and 9 months I think so I was 19 when we first started I'm now 45 it's a long time I don't even know what it's going to be like to not have health but I think this time we've had enough and we want to do 3 really good parties so we had one earlier this weekend which went really really well and it had a really euphoric feeling and lots of the old old Hellfire crowd came because when you've been doing something for 26 years you you meet generations of youngsters I remember a woman coming in and said have you met my daughter and she pointed into the middle of the dance floor and I'm like oh you mean that woman with her with her top off and she looked quite intoxicated and she's like yes because I can tell you're a little bit shocked and I'm like I am a little bit shocked and she said you know what this is the safest club in Sydney because if I'm not looking after her you are and I went yep you probably got me I am looking after her so yeah so we've seen their kids there was another time where there was a man filming a show and I'm like you can't film the performer and then he's like yes I can it's my daughter I'm like well after the show I will provide you with a DVD of her titties but you can't film them in the club sorry so it's been an interesting to do something sexual like to do something that's so much about sexuality you don't think it's going to be about family but it turns out that if your parents love something they might pass that love on to you but speaking of love you wrote your master's thesis is that correct on Operation Spanner so tell us about that and maybe briefly explain it for people who don't know what that was I wanted to write on BDSM and I was a women's studies major and a philosophy major and I'd heard about a case in the UK where a bunch of men were prosecuted for doing BDSM with each other in a party in a private party and of course this is at the time things that I'd done and not only were the people that were hurting others prosecuted the people that allowed people to hurt them were prosecuted and that shocked me the idea that you couldn't consent to harm to your own body and I could think of a lot of other ways in which people often consent to harm to their own body you let a surgeon chop you up and that can go wrong you go to a boxing ring and that can go wrong so what I wanted to do was I wanted to write a thesis about what what happens when people consent to harm on their own body in a say in a say masochistic context and essentially what I came up with was that when our cases go through the courts we invariably have a very hard time because they don't understand the rules of engagement in our subculture and that's exactly the same as a boxing match I don't understand the rules of engagement it looks like violence to me so essentially I advocated for having a court where experts BDSM experts were brought in on cases when harm happened What's the biggest misconception about you? Everyone thinks that I'm hard to approach or a bit of a bitch but I think that when you run a nightclub you have to be able to throw out a drunk man who's arguing with you so you actually do have to have a bit of a presence and I like I think my people find me so if they're not brave enough to walk over they're not my people so I don't mind Jackie Ultra thank you for an amazing fireside chat