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ABC News
10-08-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Picnic at Hanging Rock is just as unsettling and relevant 50 years on
Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, released 50 years ago, is remembered for its eerie atmosphere and mysterious story. But beneath its haunting beauty, the film challenges the idea of colonial control over the Australian landscape. The rock becomes a place that refuses to be explained or conquered by European logic. This tension between the land and colonial power still matters today. The failure of the referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament shows how divided Australia remains over questions of reconciliation and Indigenous sovereignty. Rewatching Picnic at Hanging Rock in 2025, we can appreciate the film as an unsettling portrayal of place, silence and disappearance. Picnic at Hanging Rock tells the story of a group of private schoolgirls and their teachers who visit the nearby Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day in 1900. During the excursion, three students and one teacher mysteriously disappear. No clear explanation is ever given, which unsettles both the characters and the audience. The mystery triggers hysteria, scandal and a slow collapse of order at Appleyard College. As the search for answers continues, the film refuses to provide resolution, deepening its sense of unease and ambiguity. Based on Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel, the story captured the public imagination with its haunting beauty and unanswered mystery. Audiences were obsessed with whether it was based on true events (it wasn't). The film became a landmark of the Australian New Wave, a 1970s movement that revitalised the national film industry with bold, artistic storytelling and a focus on uniquely Australian themes. With its poetic visuals, haunting score and colonial setting, the film stood out for its mood rather than action. Audiences were both fascinated and frustrated by its lack of closure, and it gained a cult following, especially among viewers drawn to its gothic atmosphere and slow-burning mystery. Ngannelong, also known as Hanging Rock, is a striking volcanic formation north-west of Melbourne. For the Dja Dja Wurrung, Woi Wurrung and Taungurung peoples of the Kulin Nation it is a deeply important cultural and spiritual place. Lindsay and Weir's mystery of white schoolgirls who mysteriously vanish sits on top of older, deeper traumas – those of dispossession and the forced removal of Indigenous people from their lands. While the film appears dreamlike and mystical, Ngannelong's sacredness challenges this romantic view, reminding us that the land holds its own stories and history. It does not forget. Picnic at Hanging Rock can be seen as a powerful story about colonial fear and uncertainty. The unexplained disappearance of the schoolgirls plays off the idea that European thinking and logic can't fully understand or master the Australian landscape. When watched through this lens the story reveals just how fragile colonialism is. The film invites viewers to think differently about Australia's identity, suggesting the landscape itself remembers the past and actively resists the stories colonisers have tried to tell about it. The film contrasts the tidy world of Appleyard College – which stands for colonial order, built on white privilege and Britishness – against the untamed mysterious landscape of Ngannelong. The girls represent white femininity, meant to bring culture and control. When they vanish, it's as if the land rejects these colonial ideals. Their disappearance unravels the school's order, exposing how fragile colonial power really is. It hints at a deeper crisis beneath the surface. Russell Boyd's cinematography is key to the film's unsettling mood. Shifting light and strange angles create a sense of uncertainty. The bush isn't just background, it is defiant. This fits with 'ecological cinema', where nature has its own voice. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, the land often overpowers people. It refuses to be controlled or explained by colonial ideas. Picnic at Hanging Rock is part of the Australian Gothic: literature and films which explore dark parts of Australia's story. Named for European Gothic literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, these 20th century Australian stories often express the anxieties, violence and uncanny dislocations of colonisation and the natural landscape these settlers encountered. In this Australian Gothic tradition, Picnic at Hanging Rock uses haunting and mystery to explore deep social and historical wounds. These unsettled feelings still shape how Australia sees itself. Australia's national identity rests on silences and erasures. Like the missing schoolgirls, the colonial subject is lost – unsure of who belongs and whose history matters. Picnic at Hanging Rock remains powerful today, especially in light of ongoing discussions about Indigenous sovereignty and reconciliation in Australia. The film's mystery is never solved, forcing viewers to sit with the discomfort of what's left unsaid. The land is not something empty or passive, but alive. It is a force that remembers and resists. Even 50 years later, the film still unsettles, not just through its eerie beauty, but by challenging colonial ways of thinking and reminding us that sovereignty endures – even if it's not always visible. This piece first appeared on The Conversation. Jo Coghlan is an associate professor of humanities, arts and social sciences at the University of New England.
Irish Post
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Post
Ten minutes with Johnny McEvoy
THE singer Johnny McEvoy has just celebrated his 80th birthday. He has marked the milestone with a new album entitled Both Sides — 14 songs and six audio stories recorded and read by the singer. This week he took time our to talk to the Irish Post... Johnny McEvoy has released a new album What are you up to? I'm writing poems, short stories, songs and I'm still touring. Which piece of music always sends a shiver down your spine? There is one piece that does it: Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. It was featured in a 1975 Australian movie called Picnic At Hanging Rock which is actually one of my favourite movies. Which musician or singer has most influenced you? There are two: Hank Williams influenced me a lot in my early years followed by the best of them all in my opinion, Liam Clancy. I believe he was the best singer and storyteller, the while being also very theatrical. What's on your smartphone playlist at the minute? I don't have one. What are your favourite lyrics? Any of Dylan's songs: Desolation Row I believe is his finest. But I could name dozens of other songs from various artists. The Planter's Daughter is an intriguing song that you wrote. What's the story behind it? It's a song I wrote about my wife. It tells the story of how we met, trying to find a decent chat up line, and after many failed attempts she eventually agreed to meet me for a coffee. We were together for 50 years. I'll always love the planter's daughter. What are your Irish roots? My family roots are in Galway, but I was born in Banagher, Co. Offaly. The family left there when I was 6, and have lived in Dublin and surrounding areas since. What is your favourite place in Ireland? A place I would find moving in an historical and atmospheric way would be the Feather Beds in the Dublin mountains. I always find it very calming and it just sits there unchanged in silence looking down over Dublin. What would you say has been your proudest moment on stage over you many decades of singing? Any night can be your proudest night, but the next night can be a disaster. I wouldn't change a thing. McEvoy's new album Both Sides What has been your favourite venue? The Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, when I walk into the Gaiety even now 60 years after I first performed there the smell alone brings back a thousand memories. Have you a book that has been a major influence on you? Sean O'Casey's autobiography. Which living person do you most admire? Any man or woman who deals with addiction and comes out on top. Which trait in others do you most admire? I would admire loyalty most. What would be your motto? Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place, would be something I live by. What's the best advice you've ever been given? Do your job and do it to the best of your was from my dad. In terms of inanimate objects, what is your most precious possession? A portrait of Michael Collins that was given to me by my wife the day we got married. What's best thing about where you live? The sea. And the worst? The DART. What do you believe in? I'm growing to believe in myself. What do you consider the greatest work of art? For me Michelangelo's David. Who is the greatest love of your life? Odette, my wife, was the love of my life.
