The story of the vulnerable white person vanishing without trace into the harsh Australian landscape is a potent and compelling element in multiple genres of mainstream Australian culture. It has been sung in "Little Boy Lost," brought to life on the big screen in "Picnic at Hanging Rock," immortalized in Henry Lawson's poems of lost tramps, and preserved in the history books' tales of Leichhardt or Burke and Wills wandering in mad circles. A world-wide audience has also witnessed the many-layered and oddly strident nature of Australian disappearance symbolism in media coverage of...