No picnic at Hanging Rock: Campaign to recognise Aboriginal past rather than 'white myth' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

23.1.17

No picnic at Hanging Rock: Campaign to recognise Aboriginal past rather than 'white myth' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): It is 50 years since the publication of Joan Lindsay's novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, and more than 40 years since Peter Weir's iconic film, told the story of school girls and their teacher going missing during a picnic at Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day in 1900, and never being seen again.

The Miranda Must Go campaign has been created by PhD student Amy Spiers, who argues that while many Australians are familiar with the story Picnic at Hanging Rock — and the character of missing school girl Miranda — hardly anyone was familiar with the Indigenous history of the area.

"The main goal of the campaign is to make people think about how obsessively we retell the story of Picnic at Hanging Rock, which is essentially a fiction of vanished white school girls," she said.

"While on the other hand we actively ignore the removal and displacement of Aboriginal people that actually took place at Hanging Rock."