Picnic at Hanging Rock

First of all, this sectoin of my website is undergoing i pretty major redoing. I'm redoing a lot of it and adding new things. That will take time so I'm going to keep this section up and it will change over time. It will be divided into over 20 sections, including a general introduction (this bit), material on the orignal book and its various printings, an analysis of the novel, stuff on the trailer and the movie itself, details about the movie, information about the movie script, various releases of the movie, articles about the movie, the play version, the televison series, you tube stuff on the movie, a few outtakes, reviews and synopses of the movie, an interview with Peter Wrir, the time effect, what actually happened to the girls, material on Australian literature, the real hanging rock and material on the first people.As you can see it will take me a good while to get all that done.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a book by Joan Lindsay from Penguin Books, published in 1967 and reprinted various times thereafter. The book concerns the story of a girl's school outing in the Australian outback and the mysterious disappearances that occur during that outing. Various paranormal elements are present in the book, especially the manner in which time seems to stand still at one point. The book was later made into an excellent movie and a not-so-excellent Amazon series.

General Information

The events in the book and the movie are fictional. but the power of the movie and it's events is so strong that there are still some people that insist the events are real. Some people have written me taking extreme displeasure with that statement. An Australian journalist wrote me and told me he had done quite a bit of research through the newspaper files and there was nothing to show that the events really had happened. Although there is one source cited below that says the story is true, that source itself presents no facts to back it up.

What kind of facts am I talking about? Copies of newspaper articles or magazine articles from the time covering the events as factual; copies of police reports concerning any disappearance; copies of any reports turned in relating to any search teams that had allegedly been used to try and find the girls. Also, if the event had really happened, then there would have been others throughout the years that would have gone to Hanging Rock on their own to search for the girls, perhaps for a magazine article about the "anniversary" of their disappearance, but no such article or information has even been forthcoming.

Now, if someone can present me with copies of the above types of proof then I will be happy to add them to this site and give the person full credit. In a way it is a tribute to the outstanding quality of the film that some people still believe quite fervently that the events actually happened despite the lack of any actual proof of anything unusual actually happening on that date.

The various Picnic at Hanging Rock books

The original book and ones based on the general idea of the events

Copies of the book I actually have.For the standard actual book I won't put the review in this section but if I've done a review for Goodreads for a book based on the movie I'll put the review beneath the cover of the book. Both the original story and the books based on the original story will be included in this section. Note: I'm pretty sure there are copies I don't have because I haven't found them yet. They're probably in another language which isn't always included in references to the main book.

These are copies of the book that are in my collection which include a few in other languages. There are other copies available but at least for now they are above what I can actually afford.

This is an early version of the story, copyright 1967. I have two copies of the book and both have the same problem. The interior came lose from the cover.

Published 1968. Published in England. Has a list of characters at the beginning.

1961. Time Without Clocks about Joan Lindsay. Published in Australia.

2013. England. Has a list of characters.

2013. Secrets at Hanging Rock. I reviewed this for Goodreads and my review is as follows.The book takes a dual approach. One thread concerns events right after the picnic. Michael unfortunately is a prime suspect and he has to sit through an interrogation while the police, and the jury, try to find out just what happened. This is very rough on him. Also, the records of the previous investigation were destroyed in a fire. The second threat is about an archaeological did at the rock that uncovers an area that has skeletons in it. One of them is a female who was pregnant since the bones of the fetus are also found. Two other female skeletons are found and one male skeleton.(This is a point where the book is somewhat confusing. How did all of them end up in the same place at the same time? Did the girls and Miss Mc Craw enter the same space, find the skeleton of the guy and then get trapped? Why did they go into that cave-like space anyhow?>Mary Wade is the archaeologist and Jo is an assistant and also her lover. (That they were lovers is fine but I think the sex scenes are not really necessary in this particular book.)There's a lot of trouble for them as the local aborigine group tries to stop the excavation, claiming that the skeletons are their people (Yet it is firmly established in articles, etc, that the native peoples of that area consider it taboo to climb the rock because there are evil spirits there.)Also, the local group opposes the fact that females are on the rock.The way the team excavates the area is explained rather well and helps one to understand just how much work is involved in archaeology.There's a romantic problem for Mary and Jo and, again, I don't consider it germane to this particular story.Also, Mary does something which is basically is unethical as far as archaeological work goes.It seems very possible that the female skeletons are the missing people but it's left unclear whether they really are or not. (If they're not the missing people, though, then how did the skeletons end up there? Where did they come from and why do they just happen to be where the others had disappeared? It basically has to be them; there is no other reasonable explanation.)l only put up reviews like this for books that are not about the movie, tv series or play itself.

The Plays

There have been some plays based on the story. I have found two of these but I wouldn't be suprised if there are more. BLACK PAHR play' PAHR PLAY

The Various Films

The orignial film. This is available in several choices including just the orignal film, the film in the Criterion film, and the orignial film, the Criterion version and various pices based on the movie such as interviewing someone. If you can film the last one, and it's probably on Ebay, it's the best to get. THE ORIGINAL MOVIE THE CRITERION VERSION THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

The Spoken Word version.

There aren't many of these out there.

Various You Tube items

There's a whole lot of these there so I'll be listing the one's I've already seen.

The television series

There has also been six-part television series based on the book. It has a lot of differences from the movie. It's interesting when you compare the things available online about the movie vs. the things available about the television series. I get the impression I am definitely not the ony person who didn't care for the television series because when I look online I see almost nothing available for sale (which, of course, makes people money) especially when I compare it to the amount of material available for sale about the movie. My own estimate is for every teleivision series item available there are at least fifty items (books, pictures, etc.) available about the telesion series.