Queen of the Little Desert

A FORMER Les Girls drag queen has traded Kings Cross for country life in Goroke. SIMONE DALTON reports

Wanda was homeless.

A 30-year veteran of the glamorous Les Girls cabaret show in Sydney's infamous Kings Cross, she was suddenly without a show and a roof over her head.

There was only one thing for it.

Pack up her feather boas, sequins and wigs and head south to Goroke, on the edge of the Little Desert, in the west Wimmera.

Goroke's a long way from Kings Cross - and that's not just the 1146km drive.

At Goroke they strip crops rather than clothes, there's not much nightlife, and alcohol and cigarettes are about the hardest drugs most people will find.

So you've got to wonder what the attraction was.

Wanda asked that question herself at first, but soon discovered Goroke's charm.

She even reckons there are similarities between her tiny home town and the sleazy "Cross".

"Everything happens in one street," Wanda says. "You just don't have the drugs and pimps and pro stitutes at Goroke."

Wanda, who originally came from the southern Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla, was born a boy and from an early age knew she wanted to be an entertainer.

Then, at age eight, she realised she was different.

"I saw Carlotta (the most mous Les Girl) as a kid and told my parents that is what I want to be," she says.

They were not that impressed.

Les Girls was a cabaret show that began in the 1960s and featured heavily-costumed transsexual men dressed in drag.

Little did Wanda know at the time that Carlotta, who would appear in soap opera Number 96 and the film Priscilla Queen of the Desert, would become a close friend who she fondly calls "mum".

At 10, Wanda wondered why she felt like a girl, but didn't look like one, and as the years rolled on things became more confusing, until she finally ran away from home at 16.

At first, Wanda lived under a staircase in Kings Cross, until being found by some "lovely people" who offered her a room in their home.

Back in the late 1960s, Kings Cross was a place of bohemians, poets and academics and had not yet been tainted by drugs and crime.

This changed by the early 1970s but Wanda never got involved in illicit drugs.

"I have seen too many people go under," she says.

"It was nothing unusual to walk along the street and see someone lying in the street dead."

Once at the Cross, Wanda began hormone therapy, acquiring treatment from a kind local chemist who she says "felt sorry for us girls".

Being discovered by Les Girls was her big break.

"I auditioned and got the job and kept lying (about my age) and telling them I was 18," Wanda says.

For the next 30 years, Wanda toured in Les Girls and made TV appearances in the hit show Prisoner and the Mike Walsh and Don Lane variety shows.

Wanda remembers a time when a young TV performer named Eric Bana came along to interview her and left with the full Wanda treatment, dressed in drag.

The Hollywood star, who was a "little chubbier" in those days, wore a caftan and black wig and looked like "Ronald McDonald in a dress", Wanda says.

She was even offered a part in Priscilla Queen of the Desert but felt it was a rehash of another movie and opted for another part in what would be a lesser-known film called Snowy.

"Priscilla was the one that made a fortune," she says.

Les Girls was hard work, with three shows a night, finishing in the early hours of the morning, often attracting Australian and international celebrities.

Wanda's Le Girls role also involved five years on the road travelling around Australia and New Zealand.

If was after this tour that Wanda was left without a home and took up her friend's offer to live in their house at Goroke.

These days, she works behind the bar at the local pub and also does regular charity shows as "Wanda, the Queen of the Little Desert".

She has become part of the small community and rounds up the local girls for a disco dance on Friday nights or to take part in her shows.

Goroke local Maggie Klemm has been roped in to play Madonna, Dusty Springfield and Cher in performances with Wanda.

Even Maggie's 85-year-old mother was persuaded into performing in a female version of the Village People, organised by Wanda.

"It is so much fun to have her around. She is just one of the girls," Maggie, 58, says.

Wanda's neighbour, Jack Cooney, 73, who owns the local store, agrees.

"She's absolutely fantastic, a top- of-the-range performer and she's a real character and quick-witted," he says.

While Wanda may never be able to settle down and have kids like other women, Goroke has allowed Wanda to realise some other simple dreams.

"I always wanted a vegie patch and chickens and I have always wanted to do painting and write," she says.

She loves sitting down the back yard, talking to the "girls" (chooks) and looking out to the open paddocks.

She still has all the costumes, although fresh air and country food seems to have made some of them harder to fit into to.

But she stresses, "I still have good legs."

We take some of the sequin and feather-clad costumes out the main street for a photo shoot and the old blokes up the road look and grin.

A header rolls past, as they do in Goroke, and Wanda remarks: "I didn't know they made them that big (until I came here).

"They are like a tractor on steroids."

The driver just waves.

"I love living here," she says.