Pushing Miranda off Hanging Rock

A Melbourne artist has challenged the dominant myth of Hanging Rock by raising uncomfortable questions about actual losses and traumas.

10 Feb 2017 12:00

Richard Watts

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Television

A still from Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

On Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1900, three schoolgirls – Miranda, Marion, and Irma – and one of their teachers, Miss Greta McCraw, vanished at Hanging Rock in central Victoria.

Despite being a work of fiction, the enduring mystery of their disappearance has fascinated generations of Australians since the publication of Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock in 1967.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts