Buzzwinker’s Ballarat: Vandemonian Lags on the Goldfields

Dr Janet McCalman AC examines the convict underbelly of Buzzwinker’s Ballarat. ‘Buzzwinker’, alias Ellen Watkins (nee Miles), was a voluble brothel madam in Esmond Street, so notorious that the diggers named a local wobbling steam engine after her. She was one of many former convicts from Van Diemen’s Land who made their mark or made their fortune or simply made a living in the Golden City.

Janet is the author of ‘Vandemonians: the repressed history of Colonial Victoria’ (2021). Her other books are ‘Struggletown’ (1984), ‘Journeyings’ (1993) and ‘Sex and Suffering’ (1998) on the Royal Women’s Hospital. She taught interdisciplinary history at the University of Melbourne for over twenty years.