A Few of My Favorite Things > Book & Movie > Picnic at Hanging Rock

Occasionally I'll write something about one of my favorite things. This will usually be a book or movie. They'll not be presented in any special order and they're not my all-time-favorites, but they will be movies and books that I do like and that most of the people I see daily have probably never heard of. You see they will not have been written or filmed recently (say the last 10 or so years). The first of these is both a book and a movie:

Picnic at Hanging Rock [Trailer - Wikipedia - Amazon Video on Demand] is a 1975 film from Australia. It is directed by Peter Weir (The Way Back (2010), The Truman Show (1998), Dead Poet Society (1989), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) to name but a few of the other movies he's directed), and based on the 1967 book by Joan Lindsay (which naturally I have, and yes I've read it). The screenplay was written by Cliff Green.

It is the story of the disappearance of three students and a teacher from Appleyard College in Victoria. The girls disappear on Valentines Day, February 14th 1990. They are part of a group of students, two teachers and the wagon driver Mr Hussey who go on an educational picnic to Hanging Rock, a geological marvel about 11 km from the school.

The haunting music and vague hints dropped in the opening set the scene for the mystery to follow. Although thought by many to be based on true events it is not. Since one of the main methods the film uses to entice the viewer is to ask questions, I'm not going to provide answers and ultimately the film doesn't either. The final chapter of the book "The Secret of Hanging Rock" was published twenty years after the novel, two years after Joan Lindsay's death.

Some links of possible interest:

• Hanging Rock's website Hanging Rock is a real place although innocent of the events described in the book and movie.
• Joan Lindsay's house at Langwarrin on the Mornington Peninsula
• Picnic at Hanging Rock: a full length play by Laura Annawyn Shamas
• Picnic at Hanging Rock on Google Video
• The Australian Ghost Hunter's Society article What Really Happened at Hanging Rock?
• The Secret of Hanging Rock, article at Wikipedia about the originally unpublished final chapter of Joan Lindsay's novel.
• The Secret of Hanging Rock, summary of the originally unpublished final chapter on Brett McKenzie's site.
• The BookOrphan site also has an interesting article on Joan Lindsay: The Mystique of Hanging Rock
• Darkchilde's Sanctuary: a fan site with a lot of information about both the film and novel

Picnic at Hanging Rock the Novel and Film on DVD:

• Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay, at Amazon, at Barnes and Noble, at Borders, search on ABEBooks.
• Picnic at Hanging Rock, DVD at Amazon, at Barnes and Noble, at DVDEmpire.
• The Secret of Hanging Rock, search on ABEBooks.
• You can download The Theme from Picnic at Hanging Rock MP3 from Amazon.
• The movie is also available from NetFlix as both DVD and Instantly.
• The book The Murders at Hanging Rock is a 200 page analysis of the events in the novel offering various possible solutions. Search on ABEBooks.

Oh, by the way, February 14th 1900 fell on a Wednesday not a Saturday.