"Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in 1900 and all the characters who appear are long since dead, it hardly seems important."
It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred.
Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared.
They never returned.
Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves.
Cultural significance of Hanging Rock
Hanging Rock (also known as Mount Diogenes, Dryden's Rock, and to some of its traditional owners as Ngannelong is a distinctive geological formation in central Victoria, Australia. A former volcano, it lies 718m above sea level (105m above plain level) on the plain between the two small townships of Newham and Hesket, approximately 70 km north-west of Melbourne and a few kilometres north of Mount Macedon.
In the middle of the 19th century, the traditional occupants of the place – tribes of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Woi Wurrung and Taungurung – were forced from it. They had been its occupants for thousands of years and, colonisation notwithstanding, have continued to maintain cultural and spiritual connections with the place.
To the settler colonialist society, Hanging Rock became a place for recreation and tourism. It came alternately under private, government, and mixed public-private control.
In the late 20th century, the area became very widely known as the setting of Joan Lindsay's novel Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Wikipedia
Picnic at hanging rock (eBook) by Home of the famous writer, Joan Lindsay, Mullbery Hill, contains many items related to the creation of her now classic novel.
Joan Lindsay (1896 – 1984) was born into a prominent artistic dynasty – the Boyds – and married into another. Her husband was the artist and inaugural president the National Trust in Victoria Sir Daryl Lindsay.
Initially intent on a career in art, she studied at the National Gallery of Victoria School between 1916 and 1920 and, although she painted throughout her life, writing was her main creative pursuit.
Lindsay’s fame as an author culminated with Picnic at Hanging Rock. Written in only four weeks at her home, Mulberry Hill, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, it was first published in 1967. Set on St.Valentines Day in 1900, it tells of a group of students at at school for young ladies who vanish whilst visiting Hanging Rock. The the novel became part of the Australian literary canon and was made into an equally iconic Australian film in 1975.
The National Trust’s custodianship of Mullberry Hill, the home she shared with her husband, contains many objects related to the writing, publishing and filming of this famous novel.
Joan Lindsay collected antique St. Valentines Day cards, an interest that began after she inherited an album from her parents. Included in her collection are the original cards used as props by actors in the film version.
