If you close your eyes, just for a second, and think of Hanging Rock, what comes to mind? Schoolgirls in long white dresses? Pan pipes? The “geological marvel” of the rock itself, where four girls went missing on Valentine’s Day in 1900 and only one came back?
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Picnic at Hanging Rock, the Peter Weir film based on Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel, and its images, motifs and mood, all fundamental to the Australian new wave, have burrowed into our cultural consciousness over the decades and become defining.
