An Actual Picnic at Hanging Rock

One of the nice things about having pages on the web is when someone writes to you and lets you know that they not only like your pages, but actually can put some of them to good use.

I got an e-mail back in July from Jeff, a schoolteacher in Australia. He wrote that he teaches at Siena College in Camberwell, Victoria, which is a girls' school and in his English 9 class there were going to do a study of the film. He said that they would be able to use some of my material on the film, and that when they finished their study of the film they would then have a picnic at the Rock itself!

Then, almost as if the strangeness of the movie was carrying over to reality, he wrote me the day before the planned outing. It was raining and it looked like their whole trip would have to be cancelled. The next day, though, the rain stopped. He writes:

"We gathered at school on Monday morning-the girls in a mixture of dress: long white lace, britches and vests, and track suits for those without imagination. Some even had lace up boots, hats and gloves. We travelled by bus-an hour and a half from Melbourne."

"Although it was raining in Melbourne there was only a minor threat from the clouds up north. The girls ran all over the rock, finding their way down through the crevices and up to the top of the spires. Although I've been to Hanging Rock quite a few times I was amazed by the mass of tunnels and caves which I hadn't noticed before. The damp added an atmosphere which I hadn't experienced before and the girls all running around, exploring in their white lace seemed so right. A number of other people there commented to them about their dress-maybe it should be an added feature."

Fortunately he took pictures of their outing, and I want to include those pictures here: