Picnic at Hanging Rock crackles with dry summer plant-life: gum trees, ferns, tangled bracken, dogwood, mountain laurels, and woodlice grubbing in rotten bark. Wallabies scuffle in the red dust, parrots flash scarlet wings. Into this summer idyll, the white-clad girls of Appleyard College clip clop by horse-drawn carriage for a Valentine’s Day picnic. Some never return.

The Appleyard girls are not the only visitors to the Rock that drowsy afternoon: two young men watch ‘the sheilas’ leap a creek and single-file into the rubbery ferns at the foot of Hanging Rock. One follows them.

“It’s nasty here,” whimpers Edith. “I never thought it would be so nasty or I wouldn’t have come.” (27)

The police miss much: vital clues go unrecorded, others are destroyed. Mystery abounds, and the lives of those at the college warp and shatter or veer into new directions. How a single event effects landscape, wildlife, and people is central to the novel. Lindsay repeatedly presents the image of a stone in a pond creating ripples of consequence which ‘darken and spread.’

But the reverse is also true: landscape effects people. As the girls climb towards the monolith, they become bewitched by a ‘powerful presence’ whose ‘unfolding marvels’ are unseen.

“At every step the prospect ahead grew more enchanting…” (28).

The narrative meanders much like ‘the winding course of the creek’ the girls cross: slowing to a trickle, then suddenly ‘running quite swiftly’ while the resolution remains ‘tantalising hidden behind the screen of tall forest trees.’ I read it in a hurry, but reflecting now see some hidden marvels unfolding and think this would be a novel that improves on a second reading.

Lindsay originally included a final chapter which explained the mystery, but was persuaded to discard it by her editor. The missing chapter did become available after her death and is easily Googled…

Picnic at Hanging Rock continues to cast ripples today. Hanging Rock, located near Mount Macedon in Victoria, is a literary tourist destination. Visitors often shout Miranda! Miranda! into the great Australian void provoking community members who want the area recognised for its aboriginal significance. The Miranda Must Go campaign aims to redirect attention to the indigenous history of the area and not the fictional schoolgirls.

I found Joan Lindsay’s novel via a literay travel guide: Sarah Baxter’s Literary Places. Picnic at Hanging Rock featured in the Australian chapter.

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