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

Richard Watts

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Writing and Publishing

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 is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM, and serves as the Chair of La Mama Theatre's volunteer Committee of Management. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and was awarded the status of Melbourne Fringe Living Legend in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. Most recently, Richard was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Green Room Awards Association in June 2021. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts