Hanging Rock vs. Storm Boy: which iconic Aussie movie location is your next trip?

Which classic 1970s Aussie movie set appeals to you the most? Do Miranda and her Rock call to you, or Storm Boy and his beloved pelican? It's a hard choice - and not just for film buffs - but our duelling experts are here to help.

Aussie movies do a bonzer job showing off the wide brown land. Crocodile Dundee co-starred the Kakadu wetlands, Priscilla was a vehicle for Uluru, and Baz Luhrmann's Australia gave us the dramatic Kimberley, even though Tourism Oz missed a golden opportunity to market the country with the slogan: "Australia - Better than the Movie."

But none have presented our geology so ethereally as Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock. A novel before it was a movie, and an extrusive igneous soda trachyte formation created by a volcano six million years before it was a novel, Hanging Rock (both the movie and the trachyte) are national icons. Fans gather on Valentine's Day every year to cosplay Miranda and co. and wear heavy muslin, sip tea, nibble scones and climb the Rock. Most reappear.

Pelicans are okay if you like that sort of thing, but no such similar event is held at Coorong to commemorate Storm Boy. Perhaps there aren't enough kids with holiday hair prepared to cuddle smelly seabirds on desolate dunes.

Hanging Rock is a suspended boulder, perched on other boulders that overhang the path to the summit of an arrangement of rough rock pinnacles, collectively also known as Hanging Rock. And if you think that's long-winded and unnecessarily confusing, you need to rewatch the movie.

Beloved by brooding philosophy students doing a minor in The Aesthetic Use of Eerie Light and Even Eerier Pan Flutes in Australian Cinema, Picnic at Hanging Rock showcases but a fraction of the magnificent Macedon Ranges.

Beyond its famous foothill foundation, the region's stunning landscape is filled with lookouts and walking and cycling trails, including the Murmuring Walk, scenic paths around Sanatorium Lake and along the Campaspe River. The Macedon Ranges Walking Trail features the 21-metre-high Mt Macedon War Memorial Cross, and a steep 500-metre ascent to a spectacular viewing platform atop Camel's Hump, a volcanic sibling of Hanging Rock.

In spring, wildflowers enliven the panoramic palette. Festivals bloom too, and wildlife shows, craft fairs and concerts are held at Hanging Rock. You can take in the horticultural excellence at the Bolobek Garden Fair in Macedon and tipples at 14 venues during the Budburst Wine Festival. On Australia Day, you can attend the Aussie-as-it-gets Hanging Rock Cup at the Hanging Rock Racecourse.

Foodies love the farm gates and markets, held each weekend in a different village. In and around these villages, smart cafes, restaurants, bars and cellar doors are as plentiful as buttons on a corset. Close to Melbourne and easy to explore, you can check out most of the attractions in the Macedon Ranges in less time than it takes for Picnic to reach its climax.

You only need to see the first five minutes of Storm Boy to witness one of Aussie cinema's grandest entrances. The camera glides high in a luminous sky, drifting down, down, over a long aqua lagoon dotted with islands and fringed by dunes, to windswept sands where breakers roll in from boundless blue.

By the time we meet Mike, the titular lad, it's clear he's not the true star in this boy-meets-pelican classic. Nor even is the legendary David Gulpilil, magnetic as Fingerbone Bill.

Filmed in the Coorong National Park's beaches, waters and coastal villages, Storm Boy has been the region's best postcard ever since. You can see the film's real-life locations on the Storm Boy Discovery Trail, including Goolwa Beach, location for Mike's humpy home - still a peaceful 18-kilometre sandy stretch. Hideaway, the movie's original boat, lives at historic Goolwa Wharf, beside a cluster of 1880s heritage buildings and the paddle steamer Oscar W, built in 1908.

Putter up the lower Murray and you'll see pelican flocks still soaring across vast skies and waterways along with ducks, swans, cormorants, gulls, terns, grebes, sea eagles and more than 230 migratory bird species who flock in from as far as Alaska. If the movie made you yearn to live rough and roam free, head for campsites dotting the dunes and walking trails criss-crossing the traditional lands of the Ngarrindjeri people, whose stories feature at Goolwa's new Signal Point Experience Centre. Among the public artworks nearby, the pelican (Nga-Tji), Goolwa's spiritual protector, takes pride of place. Just as in the film, pelicans top the bill in the Coorong, and Jack Point Pelican Observatory should be on any nature lover's beak-it list. A viewing platform looks out from the dunes onto a rookery for Australia's largest pelican breeding colony.

Storm Boy's strongest message was a plea to protect nature, and this matters more than ever, as this precious ecosystem battles lethal threats from algal bloom, human interference and climate change. Like so many of our natural national treasures, it desperately needs our help. And nowhere deserves it more. As a stellar Coorong sundown sets the sky aflame like nature's cinematographer, you'll understand Storm Boy's dad when his kid asks why they live there. "Because it's the best place there is," he says.

Have you visited either of these iconic filming locations? Which would you recommend and why? Comment here or send your thoughts to editor@exploretravel.com.au