Hanging Rock in Victoria, Australia, is probably best known for the mysterious disappearance of a group of private school girls but is there any truth to the fiction or is there an even more sinister mystery lurking behind this eerie landmark?
When Joan Lindsay published her Aussie victorian-era mystery novel she probably had no idea of the hornets’ nest she was creating. Decades later, even after the author’s death, the fiction is still causingquite a stir, as everyone loves a good mystery. If you haven’t yet got around to reading ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ or missed the 1975 film and the more recent adaptation for television, the story in short, is that several girls from a strict boarding school go missing on a Valentine’s Day school picnic after going off exploring. The story plays on local legends, superstitions and supernatural devices like time distortion, which add another layer of suspense and drama to keep readers gripped. As Lindsay’s novel is couched in pseudo-historical references and offers no satisfactory conclusion as to what happened to the girls (her original concluding chapter was excluded from the published version of the novel!) many readers have been led to speculate that the story may have been based on real events.
So much interest has developed that writer, Yvonne Rousseau, was prompted to write The Murders at Hanging Rock, exploring possible solutions and answers to the mystery and when Lindsay’s biographer investigated the inspiration for the book she apparently unearthed a story about two girls who went missing nearly a century earlier but while there may be echoes of this, the story of Miranda, Edith, Irma and Marion was a completely fictional narrative, which came to the author in a dream.
Elements of the supernatural?
Some have argued that Lindsay’s dream was a mystical experience based on a feeling she got from visiting the place as a child and it’s not just the story itself that has elements of the supernatural. When the film was being made, clocks and watches stopping was a regular occurrence and the author herself admitted an absence of watches and clocks in her home, as she had a habit of causing them to misbehave! At the film’s premiere the cinema clock apparently stopped at exactly 12 o’clock, although the cynic in me thinks that was probably a neat publicity stunt. That said, I myself can’t wear a digital watch because they tend to go weird on me, so who knows!
So, what do we know? Well, we do know for a fact that the area, known by its European name of Hanging Rock or Diogenes Rock, is over 6 million years old and one of the best examples in the world of a mamelon, a rock formation produced by a volcanic eruption where relatively thick lava is forced through a narrow vent in the bedrock, creating the marvellous and iconic structure we see today. The rocks sit on a ley line and there is certainly a sense of the mystical attached to this whole area. Here too, people have experienced clocks stopping, time slipping and even cars appearing to roll up hill!
First nation peoples believed that evil spirits frequented the peaks of the rocks, which they said released dark energies, and refused to go up there because of it. Hanging Rock is believed to be a really important and sacred site for them, as it may have provided a neutral meeting place for several different local aboriginal tribes including the Wurundjeri, Taungerong and Djadja Wurrung. That said, if you look at the information boards here you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything about them. That’s because very little is really known about this. Instead, the fictional story of the missing girls is told as fact and many visitors even say they can feel the spirit of the girls as they climb the Rock. There is now a tradition of people shouting out Miranda’s name when they reach the top of the rocks as if still searching for the missing girl, who even had she existed would have been long-dead by now! There is much affection for the character and Miranda theme picnics take place at the rock on Valentine’s Day in her honour but this, for me, is one of the real and rather freaky mysteries of the place – how a relatively recent fiction has managed to eclipse thousands of years of fascinating real history.
The real mystery – What has happened to the true history of Hanging Rock?
Aboriginal culture was largely based on oral traditions and stories passed down through the generations but when the indigenous people were ousted, separated and relocated in the 1800s the continuity of those all-important stories was interrupted and the history of the rock and the people largely obliterated. We can’t even know for sure the original name of this place, as the only names that got written down were the ones made up by early european settlers. An inscription under an engraving of the rock made by William Blandowski, a German naturalist, refers to ‘Anneyelong’ but it’s possible that this was based on a mishearing of the real name which is probably something more like ‘Ngannelong’. Fortunately, research is underway to try and recover some of those lost stories and restore the lost history of the area for the people that belong to it.
For example, archaeological finds at the site include stone tool deposits that date back 10,000 years, demonstrating that Aboriginal people occupied this place over a long period of time, going all the way back to the end of the last Ice Age. The fact that the stones for the tools were sourced from many miles away implies that Hanging Rock was part of a much wider social network. As there was a natural water source here, some Aboriginal Traditional Owners argue that the site would have had spiritual and ceremonial significance. Although it’s not known precisely what the site was used for, as a prominent landmark situated between several important tribes, it’s probable that weddings and initiation ceremonies would have been held here, trade carried out and conflicts between tribe members resolved.
The importance of a story
For the aboriginal people, story-telling is extremely important; it’s about history, cultural identity and spirituality and their stories are inextricably linked to the land. They call it the Dreamtime – a story that dates back 65,000 years – the story of past events, how the universe came to be, how humans were created, how the land was formed and how humans relate to the land around them.
The Elders of the Taungurung people tell a story in which the iconic parallel standing stones of Hanging Rock are young boys who were turned to stone for misbehaving and failing to show respect. For the Dja Dja Wurrung People the rock is a story place and a dreaming place and highly significant because it connects their community with their Ancestors. For the Wurundjeri, Hanging Rock was a place for large important gatherings providing shelter, food and water but also a ceremonial site with links to their own mythology; its importance for them being similar to the significance of Uluru (Ayers Rock) for the aboriginal people there.
Experience Hanging Rock for yourself
So much of Hanging Rock still remains a mystery which, along with its spooky atmosphere, is part of what makes it so appealing and far more than just a good picnic spot. Have a look at the map to get a good overview of the site before taking a tour to discover this fascinating and intriguing place for yourself…
