Picnic at Hanging RockPicnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock is about a trip by a party of girls from Appleyard College, an upper class private boarding school, who travel to Hanging Rock in Victoria's Mount Macedon area for a picnic on Valentine's Day 1900. The excursion ends in tragedy when three girls and a teacher mysteriously vanish after climbing the rock. No reason for their disappearance is ever given, and the one girl who returned has no memory of what had happened to the others. A fourth girl had climbed the rock with the group, but returned in hysterics for reasons she could not explain. The disappearances provoked much local concern and international sensation with sexual molestation being high on the list of possiblities. Several organized searches of the area found nothing. A young man on a private search located the third girl, but was himself found in an unexplained daze---yet another victim of the rock. Concerned parents withdrew their daughters from the formerly prestigious College and several of the staff there resigned. We are told that both the College, and the Woodend Police Station where records of the investigation were kept, were destroyed by fire shortly afterwards.