July 31st, 2025The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever
Red was the colour de jour as 100+ people headed to the Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens on July 19 for The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever.
The event is held at locations around the world where participants recreate the music video for musician Kate Bush’s 1978 song Wuthering Heights.
The inspiration was Shambush!’s The Ultimate Kate Bush Experience, which took place in 2013 in Brighton, England, as part of Brighton Fringe, created by performance collective Shambush! who attempted to set an unofficial world record for the most people dressed as Kate Bush in one place, with hundreds attending.
Wuthering Heights is the only novel by the English author Emily Brontë, initially published in 1847 under her pen name Ellis Bell. The main themes of the novel are love, passion, and vengeance. It is the love between Heathcliff and Catherine that runs through the novel, though it assumes dangerous proportions as the plot thickens with Catherine rejecting Heathcliff and choosing Edgar Linton.
Kate Bush wrote her chart-topping debut single when she was just 18 years old. She told the BBC about the origins of a literary love song that began a unique career in music.
It became an unexpected number one hit in 1978 – the first song written and performed by a female artist to reach the UK top spot. What makes the single even more idiosyncratic is that its title and story are borrowed from Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel – but it was actually a television series that spurred Bush to write the song.
“Well, I hadn’t read the book, that wasn’t what inspired it. It was a television series they had years ago,” she told Michael Aspel in a BBC interview in 1978.
As a teenager she had come across the end of an episode of a 1967 BBC adaptation of Brontë’s tale of doomed love. Its startling imagery had captivated her.
“I just managed to catch the very last few minutes where there was a hand coming through the window and blood everywhere and glass. And I just didn’t know what was going on and someone explained the story.”
Bush was 19 years old when the single was released. Born in July 1958, the youngest of three children, she grew up in an artistic household in Kent, England.
Her father, a doctor, and her mother, a nurse, surrounded their children with music, and encouraged them to learn instruments from an early age. Both of her older brothers were heavily involved in music and poetry, and she would join them performing Irish and English folk songs at home.
Jenny Jordan, one of those who took part, said she went “for the pure joy of dancing with a group of women, especially to a song like Wuthering Heights”. “Getting your costume ready, gathering a few friends and doing a few practice runs builds the anticipation. And what an atmospheric place to dance, the Wombat Hill gardens are unbeatable. It was great fun and I loved being there. I’m so grateful to organisers Gary Thomas and Tuesday Telford Perkins for making it happen.”
Words: Donna Kelly, Wikipedia and BBC | Images: Donna Kelly
