The drag queen sleeps under the city for most of the year but on Thursday took her rightful place at the top of Central Deborah Gold Mine's poppet head in preparation for the upcoming Bendigo Pride Festival.

She did not need the drums that accompany the awakening of Bendigo's Chinese dragons, but she did want a new gold dress.

Ms Triangle has been named ambassador and mascot of a festival set to bedazzle Bendigo over three fabulous weekends in March.

"I'm not to be confused with Bermuda, my sister. Don't leave nothing with her because you'll never see it again," she said moments after sweeping to the surface.

"We are here to celebrate pride and encourage this wonderful town of Bendigo to embrace."

Now in its second year, the festival is not only about today's LGBTQIA community, director John Richards said.

"There's always been a queer community in Bendigo, right from the dawn of time and certainly on the goldfields," he said.

"It's often been underground so one of the things we are really highlighting this year is that history."

Two historians are organising a walking tour of Bendigo to give people a sense of its community and are currently piecing together sometimes cryptic clues.

"Homosexuality was illegal and one of the interesting things is that you need to find code words to work out that history," Mr Richards said.

There are treasure troves of magazines dating back years, though finding them can be tricky because many deliberately avoided words like "gay", "lesbian" and "homosexual".

One code word was sometimes "de Lacey Evans" - a reference to a champion ploughman and miner who lived in Bendigo for 20 years before he was forced to reveal he was a woman in 1879.

His story made international news headlines at the time.

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"Most of the stories from that time are about legal issues. We don't get to hear about the people who have really lovely lives because they weren't arrested," Mr Richards said.

"But we can glean a lot of information.

"So its hunting for information so we can tell the local community 'you've always been here, you've always been part of this area'."

The festival's 40 events will include live theatre, music and an Q&A session answering the questions you've never been comfortable asking LGBTI people.

For more information as the festival takes shape visit www.bendigopridefestival.com.au