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.


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