At 7.12am on the day we talk, Dr Hilary Caldwell runs naked into Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin for the annual winter solstice swim. It’s a bracing start to a momentous day. By 11am, she is back at her desk to take another plunge: speaking publicly about being a sex worker for the first time.
Caldwell has never spoken about her sex work to a journalist, and barely to anyone outside her close sphere, with whom she practised what to say. Even her adult children didn’t know until recently, in the lead up to the release of her new book, Slutdom: Reclaiming Shame-Free Sexuality.
