PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
"Everything begins and ends at exactly the right moment in time". Miranda,
Picnic at Hanging Rock.
On a shimmering summer's day in 1900 a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to
Hanging Rock, Victoria. Three of the girls and a teacher disappeared. One girl
was found dazed on the rock, but no trace of the others was ever found.[1]
So claims Joan Lindsay's famous Australian novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The film of the same name, released in 1975, tantalised audiences around
the world.
What happened to Miranda, Irma, Marion and Miss McCraw? Did the book
depict a real event, or was it all a clever hoax by Joan Lindsay?
Lady Lindsay was evasive in interviews. "I can't tell you whether the story is
fact or fiction . . . but a lot of very strange things have happened around the
area of Hanging Rock - things that have no logical explanation", she claimed in
an interview with the Melbourne Herald.[2]Her
introductory note to Picnic at Hanging Rock is equally ambiguous.
"Whether (the book) is Fact or Fiction, my readers must decide for themselves.
As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the
characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems to
matter".[3]
But Lady Lindsay did know what had happened to the girls.
Tracking the mystery down through microfilm
After Peter Weir's film was released, staff at the State Library of Victoria
were besieged with letters from people requesting more information about the
alleged disappearance.
There were many red herrings. Staff at the Library searched The Age,
The Argus and the Woodend Star for February 1900 but found no
report of missing schoolgirls. The picnic supposedly took place on Saturday 14
February 1900, but Valentine's Day that year was actually a Wednesday. Joan
Lindsay quotes a supposed Melbourne newspaper report of 14 February 1913 in the
last chapter of Picnic at Hanging Rock, which suggests that the mystery
will remain unsolved forever. But no such report was found in The Age,
The Argus or The Herald for that date.
Did this picnic at Hanging Rock actually take place? What is the solution to
the mystery of Hanging Rock?
Read Joan Lindsay's sequel to Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Secret of
Hanging Rock, for the answer!
Sue Hodges, State Library of Victoria
1 The Herald , 24 October 1975.
2 Ibid.
3 Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock (Melbourne, 1967), introductory
note.
[This page has been modified from its original form by me. ]
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